Oil above $66 amid Dow rally
NEW YORK — Oil prices were pulled higher Thursday by a rally on Wall Street and a rise in home sales that suggested the country may soon regain its appetite for energy.
Benchmark crude for September delivery added $1.15 cents to $66.54 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. In London, Brent prices rose $1 to $68.21 a barrel on the ICE Futures exchange.
Oil prices lifted in morning trading as the Dow Jones industrial average rose above 9,000 mark. The last time the blue chips closed above that was on Jan. 6.
Investors also cheered a National Association of Realtors report that said sales of previously occupied homes rose for the third month in a row. The last time that happened was in the middle of the housing boom in early 2004.
Crude prices increased even though U.S. storage facilities are still swollen with a huge surplus of unused crude, said Andrew Lebow, senior vice president and broker at MF Global.
“Demand has been unimpressive, and yet the market has shrugged it off,” Lebow said. “And they have for the past few weeks.”
Government reports released this week showed U.S. gasoline supplies growing even though pump prices are well below what they were last year. Heating oil stores also have swelled to higher levels than they’ve been in decades.
On Thursday, the government reported that natural gas supplies also grew as expected last week. Stores of natural gas, a key energy source for power plants, increased by 66 billion cubic feet to about 2.95 trillion cubic feet for the week ended July 17.
At the pump, retail gas prices added less than a penny overnight to a new national average of $2.465 a gallon, according to auto club AAA, Wright Express and Oil Price Information Service. A gallon of gas is 21.8 cents cheaper than a month ago and $1.577 cheaper than last year.
In other Nymex trading, gasoline for August delivery was climbed 5.91 cents to $1.8974 a gallon and heating oil added 3.9 cents to $1.7502. Natural gas for August delivery lost 9.1 cents to $3.702 per 1,000 cubic feet.
Associated Press writers George Jahn in Vienna, Austria and Alex Kennedy in Singapore contributed to this report.
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