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To: craig crawford who wrote (7146)	5/24/2001 1:04:21 PM
From: craig crawford	Respond to of 57684

Thursday May 24, 12:39 pm Eastern Time Oil Prices Slides As U.S. Gasoline Fades LONDON (Reuters) - Oil prices took a tumble on Thursday after dealers baled out of U.S. gasoline futures following a short-lived spike to record highs. London Brent blend crude shed 64 cents to $28.60 a barrel and U.S. light crude slumped 93 cents a barrel to $28.66. U.S. gasoline futures surged to an all-time high of $1.175 a gallon but then fell back to trade 2.7 cents lower on the day at $1.132. Dealers said comfortably placed crudes stocks on both sides of the Atlantic were outweighing worries over tight inventories of clean-burning gasoline in the United States. Crude oil prices this week already had decoupled from gasoline's upward march because U.S. crude stocks stand 20 million barrels in advance of levels at this time last year. Gasoline stocks are in a small surplus although clean-burning reformulated grade RFG, used by a third of U.S. motorists, are in a substantial year-on-year deficit. Traders played down concerns over Iraq's threat to suspend exports under the United Nations' oil-for-food program. Baghdad has threatened to choke off sales if British-U.S. proposals to revise sanctions on Iraq interfere with the program. ``If Iraq does not accept any change or amendment, this means that we are no longer committed ... we shall stop the implementation of the oil-for-food formula,'' said Iraqi Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Naji Sabri Ahmed. Iraq wants a simple renewal of oil-for-food when the next six-month phase starts on June 4. The British-U.S. plan seeks to ease restrictions on civilian goods going to Iraq but also to crackdown on the oil smuggling that delivers cash direct to the Iraqi government. OPEC kingpin Saudi Arabia has said that it and other OPEC members would step in an fill any serious supply gaps created by a break in Iraqi exports. Cartel ministers have said they are unlikely to raise exports when they meet in Vienna on June 5, preferring to wait until later this year to reverse some of the 2.5 million barrels daily of output cuts put in place earlier this year. Under an OPEC price stability mechanism, if an OPEC basket of crudes remains above $28 for 20 days, the cartel could unleash extra supplies of at least 500,000 barrels per day. The basket stood shy of that at $27.23 on Tuesday.