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Crude Oil, Gasoline Jump
With Storm Headed for Gulf of Mexico </font size></center>
Sept. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Crude oil, gasoline and heating oil rose for the first day in three on forecasts Tropical Storm Rita will strengthen into a hurricane, threatening refineries and natural gas production in southern Texas by the weekend.
Four refineries along the Gulf of Mexico coast may not resume output until next year after Hurricane Katrina damaged them last month. U.S. natural gas futures jumped as Rita headed for producing areas. OPEC, meeting in Vienna today, is close to an agreement to offer customers all the crude it can pump.
``The storm situation is of concern, obviously, from the point of view of the damage that Katrina has done,'' said Kevin Blemkin, a broker with Man Financial in London. ``Going into the fourth quarter, refineries are going to be the main issue. There's no shortage of crude, so I don't think more output from OPEC is going to be necessary at this time.''
Crude for October delivery climbed $1.10, or 1.8 percent, to $64.10 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange at 11:47 a.m. London time. Prices have declined 9.5 percent from a record $70.85 on Aug. 30. They have still almost doubled since the end of 2003.
Katrina forced at least eight refineries in Louisiana and Mississippi, accounting for about 10 percent of U.S. refining capacity, to close as it battered the Gulf coast on Aug. 29. Rita would be the ninth storm this year to enter the Gulf; five, including Katrina, have disrupted production or refining.
``Refineries are running at full speed already,'' said Adam Sieminski, chief energy economist at Deutsche Bank AG in New York. That's ``compounded by the problem that 5 percent of U.S. refining capacity got knocked out by Hurricane Katrina.''
Gasoline Rises
Gasoline futures on Nymex advanced as much as 5.49 cents, or 3.1 percent, to $1.84 a gallon. Wholesale prices have slumped 37 percent from a record $2.92 a gallon on Aug. 31, two days after Katrina struck.
Average gasoline pump prices in the U.S. fell to $2.805 a gallon on Sept. 16, according to the AAA motorists' group. That's 8.2 cents lower than a day earlier. Prices have dropped 8.2 percent from a record average of $3.057 on Sept. 2.
Demand for oil normally peaks in the fourth quarter as refiners build stockpiles of winter fuels before temperatures plunge in the northern hemisphere. As the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries pumps near capacity and non-OPEC output's growth slows, producers are straining to meet demand while refineries may lack the capacity to make enough fuels.
Prices of heating fuels including natural gas and heating oil also rose. Nymex natural gas for October delivery added as much as 68.1 cents or 6.1 percent, to $11.825 per million British thermal units. Heating oil rose as much as 5.34 cents, or 2.9 percent, to $1.8904 a gallon.
Rita Heads West
Tropical Storm Rita, the 17th named storm of this year's Atlantic hurricane season, could become a hurricane within a day, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami. Its center was located about 250 miles (405 kilometers) southeast of Nassau, the Bahamas, at 5 a.m. Miami time today, according to the latest advisory on the center's Web site.
Rita may skirt the Florida Keys tomorrow, enter the Gulf and cut across it to reach southern Texas in five days, according to maps from the hurricane center forecasting the projected path of the storm. Some of the refineries located along the Texas coast include Exxon Mobil Corp.'s Baytown, the largest in the U.S., and Royal Dutch Shell Plc's Deer Park.
Opec's Intentions
The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, the source of more than a third of the world's oil, may decide today to offer all the crude its 11 member nations can produce, Sheikh Ahmad Fahd al-Sabah, the group's president and Kuwait's oil minister, said in Vienna today.
Such a decision would effectively suspend the group's quota system, which has regulated supply for about two decades. Two million barrels a day of OPEC production capacity are idle, the group's president said yesterday.
``We don't need crude oil, we need refined products,'' Deutsche Bank's Sieminski said. ``OPEC probably doesn't have a lot of production to add into the system. What is left in Saudi Arabia is high-sulfur crude oil. There isn't much of a demand for that.''
Brent crude for November settlement rose $1.03, or 1.7 percent, to $62.84 a barrel on London's International Petroleum Exchange.
To contact the reporter on this story:
Alejandro Barbajosa in London at
abarbajosa@bloomberg.net;
Last Updated: September 19, 2005 07:05 EDT
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