Heating oil climbs for 2nd day

15/07/2009

Heating oil prices were up in electronic trade this morning, bolstered by positive demand data from the American Petroleum Institute (API).

At 06:06 Eastern Time, the August delivery heating oil contract was trading at $1.5345 (93.8p) per gallon, up 2.26 cents on Tuesday's settle price.

This second day of gains follows the publication of data from the API showing that crude inventories fell in the US last week.

Analysts are now awaiting more comprehensive data from the Energy Information Administration, with experts polled by Bloomberg estimating that crude inventories fell by 2.1 million barrels last week.

Distillate stocks, which include heating oil, were expected to have risen by two million barrels over the course of the week, while gasoline demand is also thought to have weakened.

"The expectation is that U.S. gasoline demand has been weak post-July 4th. Traders would treat the API report with some caution," commented Victor Shum a senior principal at consultant Purvin & Gertz.