Oil rose more than $2 a barrel, after touching a record $112.21, and gasoline jumped to the highest ever after the Energy Department reported an unexpected decline in crude supplies on Wednesday.
The department reported a drop of 3.1 million barrels in oil stockpiles, sending the price up as much as 3.4 percent in New York. Gasoline futures jumped as much as 2.6 percent. At the pump, consumers are paying a record $3.343 a gallon on average, said AAA, the nation’s largest motorist organization.
“This reaction to the D.O.E. numbers suggests that the supply and demand fundamentals are still important,” said Adam E. Sieminski, Deutsche Bank’s chief energy economist in Washington. “It’s not just the speculators that are driving prices higher.”
Oil’s 80 percent gain in the last year is the second biggest among 19 commodities on the Reuters/Jefferies CRB Index, trailing only wheat, which has doubled. Rising global demand for raw materials and a weakening dollar have led to records this year for raw materials including corn, soybeans, rice and gold.
Crude oil for May delivery rose $2.37, or 2.2 percent, to settle at $110.87 a barrel at 2:51 p.m. on the New York Mercantile Exchange, a record close. The intraday record of $112.21 a barrel was the highest since Nymex futures trading began in 1983.
Gasoline for May delivery climbed 2.38 cents, or 0.9 percent, to close at $2.7742 a gallon. Futures reached $2.8228, an intraday record for gasoline to be blended with ethanol, known as RBOB, which began trading in October 2005.
American pump prices are following futures higher. Regular gasoline, averaged nationwide, rose 1.2 cents to the record, AAA said Wednesday on its Web site. Diesel prices advanced 1.2 cents, to $4.032 a gallon, AAA said. Diesel pump prices reached a record $4.037 on March 22.
Gasoline demand in the United States may drop by 85,000 barrels a day this summer, Guy Caruso, administrator of the Energy Information Administration, said on Monday, noting that gasoline use fell 1.4 percent in the summer of 1991, after a nine-month recession during George H. W. Bush’s presidency.
But Antoine Halff, head of energy research at Newedge USA in New York, said: “Domestic demand isn’t great but that’s not important. Global demand is still growing and that’s what matters.”
By BLOOMBERG NEWS
