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CRUDE oil futures closed down in choppy trading yesterday, failing to breach US$100 a barrel after the government reported that crude oil inventories at a key Midwest oil terminal rose for the first time in weeks. The news helped offset the market impact of an overall drop in crude oil stocks. Light, sweet crude for January delivery fell 74 cents to settle at US$97.29 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Stocks of distillates, including heating oil, also dropped more than expected last week, the Energy Department's Energy Information Administration reported. That could mean more bad news for heating oil customers already expecting costs to rise 22 percent this winter. Heating oil futures fell 0.27 cent to settle at US$2.6874 a gallon on the New York Mercantile Exchange after earlier hitting US$2.7154, a new record. Crude prices -- which rose as high as US$99.29 on the New York Mercantile Exchange earlier Wednesday and broke the previous intraday record of US$98.62

Crude oil futures rose yesterday as traders closed out December contracts and also on investors' belief that supplies are not as plentiful as a government report at first suggested. Light, sweet crude for December delivery rose $1.67 to settle at $95.10 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. But January crude, which now becomes the front-month contract, closed $1.26 below that, settling up $1.77 at $93.84 a barrel. December crude had lost 66 cents in the previous session after the Energy Department's Energy Information Administration reported an unexpected 2.8 million barrel increase in inventories last week. But much of that supply build occurred on the West Coast, where the energy infrastructure is largely isolated from the rest of the U.S., analysts said. "I think the market may have realized overnight that that EIA report wasn't that bearish," said Jim Ritterbusch, president of Ritterbusch & Associates in Galena, Illinois. Reports that ministers from

As the price of oil gets close to the totemic $100 mark there’s much talk about whether an all time high has been reached this week. According to the US Energy Department’s Energy Information Administration a record has been set this week as the previous inflation-adjusted high was $93.48 a barrel, which was reached in January 1981. But the International Energy Agency says that the previous record was $101.70 in April 1980 while Cambridge Energy Research Associates has yet another figure, $99.04 again in April 1980. What’s certain is that oil is very close to being the most expensive

OIL prices fell today in Asia, extending a decline from the previous session that came after an unexpected increase in US crude oil inventories. Light, sweet crude for November delivery fell 28 cents to US$79.66 a barrel in Asian electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange by midday in Singapore. The Nymex crude contract fell 11 cents to settle at US$79.94 a barrel in yesterday's floor session. Crude oil futures have fallen four straight days after trading at near record levels last week. The weekly inventory report from the US Energy Department's Energy Information Administration was mixed, analysts said. Crude oil supplies unexpectedly rose in the week ended Sept. 28. Gasoline and distillate inventories unexpectedly fell. And while the drop in gasoline supplies is supportive, demand for the fuel is falling, and that will pressure gasoline prices and crude futures down the road, analysts said. The EIA said in its report that crude supplies rose 1.2 million barrels last week. Analysts surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires, on average, had predicted that inventories fell 400,000 barrels. One million barrels of that increase were on the West Coast, the EIA said. Oil and gas infrastructure there is isolated from the rest of the country, though, and that might mean shortages elsewhere would support prices. Gasoline inventories fell 100,000 barrels last week, while supplies of distillates, which include heating oil and diesel fuel, fell 1.2 million barrels. Analysts had expected gasoline inventories to grow 400,000 barrels, and distillate supplies to increase 700,000 barrels. Refinery utilization rose by 0.6 percentage points to 87.5 percent of capacity. Analysts had expected an 0.4 percentage point increase. Oil's true value is closer to US$65 a barrel, said Tim Evans, an analyst at Citigroup Inc in New York, instead of at the near US$80 a barrel or higher range it has been trading. Many analysts feel oil prices have been driven up by speculative buying, and they argue that the market's underlying supply and demand fundamentals do not support the record prices of recent weeks. However, while many analysts expect oil prices to begin a seasonal decline into winter, few are willing to predict when that slide will begin. Oil prices normally drop off every year in the period between the northern summer driving season and the US and European winter. November Brent crude fell 23 cents to US$76.95 a barrel on the ICE futures