Following other commodity prices, crude prices ended lower on Monday, 17 August, 2009. Prices fell as dollar strengthened following a huge sell off in international equity market overnight. The Chinese market led the pack of decliners.
On Monday, crude-oil futures for light sweet crude for September delivery closed at $66.75/barrel (lower by $0.76 or 1.1%). During intra day trading, crude fell to an intra day low of $65.23/barrel. Last week, crude ended lower by 4.8%.
For the month of July, 2009, crude ended lower by a marginal 0.6%. For the second quarter, crude ended higher by 40%. Crude prices had rallied 11.3% in the first quarter of 2009.
Oil prices had reached a high of $147 on 11 July, 2008 but have dropped almost 55% since then. Year to date, in 2009, crude prices are higher by 42%.
In the currency market on Monday, the dollar index which weighs the value of dollar against a basket of six other currencies, rose by 0.4%.
Triggering a broad retreat in global stocks, Shanghai stocks fell 5.8% yesterday, their biggest drop this year, after persistent worries over Beijing's moves to cool economic growth added to investor caution.
Also at the Nymex on Monday, September-reformulated gasoline gained 1.35 cents to end at $1.9515 a gallon, while September heating-oil futures dropped 1.45 cents to finish at $1.8265 a gallon.
September natural-gas futures fell 7.50 cents to end at $3.163 per million British thermal units.
Crude prices had ended FY 2008 lower by 54%, the largest yearly loss since trading began at Nymex.
At the MCX, crude oil for September delivery closed lower by Rs 29 (0.85%) at Rs 3,353/barrel. Natural gas for August delivery closed lower by Rs 5.7(3.5%) at Rs 154.4/mmbtu.