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Gold/Mining/Energy : SPRL - Strat Petroleum, Ltd. (Bulls Board) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: cmgibubba who wrote (2073)	5/26/2006 3:46:55 PM
From: Tadsamillionaire	Respond to of 2322

Oil Prices Higher Ahead of Long Weekend Friday May 26, 2:43 pm ET By Madlen Read, AP Business Writer Oil Prices Move Higher Ahead of Holiday Weekend, Start of U.S. Summer Driving Season biz.yahoo.com NEW YORK (AP) -- Oil prices edged higher Friday ahead of Memorial Day weekend, the unofficial start of the U.S. summer driving season. Trading volumes were low and there was little news to guide the energy markets, but prices were supported by the prospect of higher demand for gasoline going into the summer months, refinery outages, and the possibility of further supply disruption if this year's hurricane season, which begins on June 1, is an active one. Prices at the pump have been slipping, but are still above $3 a gallon for regular unleaded gasoline in some parts of the United States. Light, sweet crude for July delivery rose 5 cents to settle at $71.37 a barrel Friday on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The market in New York closed early on Friday, and will be shut Monday in observance of Memorial Day. "This is basically the start of the driving season, and traders lately have been a little apprehensive about being too short on the weekends," said Tom Bentz, analyst at BNP Paribas. Also keeping prices afloat is the damage caused by last year's hurricane season to key oil infrastructure in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico. "Gasoline demand from week to week to week is remaining pretty steady ... and there's still some refining infrastructure offline from last year's storms," said Mike Fitzpatrick, vice president of energy risk management at Fimat USA. "That's going to remain a problem going forward." Bolstering the case for bullish sentiment in energy markets, a Fimat research report noted that there has been a recent steep slowdown in U.S. oil import growth, while product imports account for a fast-growing share of total oil imports, and the United States is becoming increasingly dependent on foreign refining capacity to meet product demand. Gasoline futures rose 3.24 cents Friday to settle at $2.1368 a gallon, while heating oil prices slipped more than a cent to settle at $1.9805 a gallon. The average U.S. retail price of a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline was $2.862, down from $2.921 a month ago, according to AAA's daily fuel gauge report. Worries about summer supply shortages had been reignited by reports of refinery snags, offsetting U.S. government data that showed gasoline inventories rose for a fourth consecutive week. Pasadena Refining Systems briefly shut a key gasoline-producing unit at its 100,000 barrel-a-day Pasadena, Texas, refinery following an operational error Wednesday, according to a state environmental report. An outage at Valero Energy's Texas City refinery lasted about seven days longer than expected, taking a total of about 210,000 barrels of gasoline and 560,000 barrels of distillate out of the market, according to Dow Jones Newswires. Meanwhile, total recovery from a fire at Valero's 48,000-barrels-a-day St. Charles refinery in Norco, La. will take four to six weeks, Dow Jones reported. Also, Murphy Oil Corp.'s Meraux, Louisiana, refinery, shuttered since Hurricane Katrina, may not return to normal operations until the end of June -- a month later than expected, according to a report published by JP Morgan late Wednesday. Natural gas prices slipped 5 cents to settle at $5.925 per 1,000 cubic feet. Data released Thursday by the U.S. Energy Department showed domestic natural gas inventories swelled by 83 billion cubic feet in the past week to 2.16 trillion cubic feet, or 50 percent above the five-year average for this time of year. Natural gas futures are near a one-year low and some analysts say that if inventories continue to grow at this pace, the country could run out of natural-gas storage capacity before winter, a prospect which should exert downward pressure on prices. Brent crude futures for July on London's ICE futures exchange fell 12 cents to settle at $70.59 a barrel.