Oil prices rose on Friday but settled below four-month highs hit in the session as concerns that high energy costs could threaten economic growth tempered hopes for stronger demand after the Federal Reserve launched its latest economic stimulus program.
Brent crude rose a seventh straight session and Brent and US crude futures posted weekly gains as the dollar fell broadly, dropping to a four-month low versus the euro, after the Fed's Thursday announcement of a third bond-buying program.
A weaker US currency is usually supportive to dollar-denominated commodities such as oil and industrial feedstock copper, which jumped to a 4-1/2 month peak. "The market is exhausted after rising so much, and the IEA (International Energy Agency) economist worrying about high oil prices probably helped pull prices back some," said Dan Flynn, analyst at Price Futures Group in Chicago. Current oil prices could push the global economy into recession, Fatih Birol, chief economist at the International Energy Agency said on Friday.
Birol said Europe and China are most vulnerable to high prices but declined to say whether this latest price jump could prompt the IEA to release oil reserves. He said the agency was monitoring markets very closely. Front-month November Brent crude rose 78 cents to settle at $116.66 a barrel, after reaching $117.95, the highest since prices reached touched $118.45 on May 3. Brent gained 2.1 percent for the week.
US October crude, up 2.7 percent for the week, rose 69 cents to settle at $99 a barrel. US crude reached $100.42, its first time over $100 since May 4 when it touched $102.72. US total crude trading volumes were a robust 49 percent above the 30-day average and outpaced Brent, which lagged its 30-day average by 7 percent.
"The Fed will be indirectly adding more liquidity into the asset markets and that money will need to go somewhere and part of it will go into commodities, even if current commodity prices are already at demand-destruction levels," said Olivier Jakob at Petromatrix in Zug, Switzerland. Highlighting the economic risk from surging oil prices, a jump in gasoline costs pushed up US consumer prices in August at the fastest pace in more than three years and squeezed spending on other items, threatening to slow economic growth.
Industrial production dropped 1.2 percent in August, the biggest decline since March 2009. The consumer price index increased 0.6 percent, the first rise in five months and the biggest since June 2009. Gasoline prices, which also recorded their largest increase since June 2009, accounted for about 80 percent of the rise in consumer inflation last month, the Labour Department said.
In contrast to those cautionary reports, US consumer confidence unexpectedly improved in early September as Americans anticipated better economic and employment prospects, but the cheery attitudes could be temporary, a survey showed. US gasoline futures rallied 1.8 percent, moving back above $3 a gallon after falling the previous two sessions. Heating oil, the benchmark distillate futures contract, rose nearly 1 percent.
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