Oil closed higher Thursday despite a report from the International Energy Agency in which the agency cut its estimates for worldwide daily crude use in light of the lingering economic downturn.
Oil / Energy Markets
Oil futures for delivery in June rose 60 cents, or slightly more than 1%, to $58.64 a barrel in New York.
In a report issued Thursday, the IEA cuts its daily consumption estimate for oil by 230,000 barrels to 83.2 million barrels per day, compared to last month’s forecast by the agency.
According to the IEA, the agency expects that oil use will fall in developed nations by 5.1% while developing economies such as Brazil, China and Russia will also have considerable weakness in 2009.
Overall, the agency sees oil demand worldwide being at its weakest since 1981.
“Global crude runs would remain depressed compared to the five-year historical range due to the weaker demand,” said the IEA.
Today’s report from the IEA comes on the heels of a report yesterday from the U.S. Department of Energy, which showed that oil inventories fell 4.63 million barrels to 370.6 million last week -- the highest stockpiles since 1990.
Oil has been posting strong gains in recent weeks on the heels of some economic reports that have shown some modest progress in the state of the overall economy. After toying with the $30-a-barrel mark three months ago, oil topped the $60 mark this week only to pull back moderately.
Natural gas futures fell by 3.1 cents, or 0.78%, to $4.297 per million British thermal units.
Metals
Gold added $2.50, or 0.27%, to $928.00 a troy ounce, up for the third straight day.
Silver futures rose by 2 cents to $14.02 an ounce, up for the second day.
Copper futures, which more closely track industrial demand, fell by 0.2 cents to $2.0350 a pound -- the sixth day in a row they’ve fallen.
