Heating oil down 6c

29/01/2009

Heating oil has fallen six cents this morning (January 29th), mimicking falls witnessed in crude prices.

By 10:30, heating oil was trading at $1.4151(99.48p) a gallon on the New York Mercantile Exchange as crude slipped below the $42-a-barrel mark.

Falls follow the publication of new data from the Energy Information Adminstration which showed that stockpiles of crude and derivatives such as heating oil are continuing to grow, which is an indication that demand for the resource in the US, the world's largest crude consumer, is continuing to weaken.

As the economic crisis has deepened, weakened demand for crude and distillates such as heating oil has been pushed prices down considerably, leading many oil and gas companies to issue weak performance statistics for the final quarter of the year.

Among the latest to do so is Royal Dutch Shell, although the company's overall profit rocketed due to the spike in oil prices witnessed in the first half of 2008, bringing total earnings for the year to £21.4 billion.