Heating oil makes fractional gain

26/01/2009

Heating oil prices have increased one tenth of a cent during morning trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange (Nymex).

BY 11:07 GMT, wholesale heating oil contracts for February delivery were trading at $1.4522 (£1.051) a gallon, mimicking the performance of crude on the same exchange.

The gains extend a large late rally witnessed on Friday (January 23rd), with heating rising more than ten cents by the close of trading.

Crude contracts also saw rises in the latter half of last week, partly in response to hopes that constraints on the global economy would begin to relent in the coming months.

However, Axel Bertuch-Samuels, deputy director of the IMF's monetary and capital markets department, told Reuters that until economic indicators do pick up, oil prices - and concomitantly heating oil prices - are likely to remain subdued.

"Global economic prospects have deteriorated in recent months, consumer and business confidence have dropped to levels that we have not seen in decades and activity too has dropped sharply," he commented.