Heating oil up on investment optimism

28/05/2009

Wholesale heating oil prices rose on the New York Mercantile Exchange (Nymex) yesterday morning (May 27th), fuelled by a strong performance from global equity markets yesterday.

Crude oil futures also touched a new six-month high on the back of the strong trading yesterday, with near-term crude Nymex contract rising above $63 (£39) a barrel.

"Yesterday's triple-digit gains in the Dow Jones proved too difficult to ignore," said analyst Marius Paun at ODL Securities, speaking to Agence France-Presse.

"As a result, crude made a new high bolstered by a weaker US dollar," he added.

The weakened dollar made trading in US crude and heating oil stocks particularly attractive to foreign buyers during electronic trading, which is dominated by acitivity from key eastern markets such as Singapore.

By 05:29 Eastern Time, the June delivery heating oil contract was trading at $1.557 a gallon, up 1.17 cents on Tuesday's closing price.