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Gold/Mining/Energy : Strictly: Drilling and oil-field services -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: BigBull who wrote (38657)	3/2/1999 12:04:00 PM
From: Platter	Respond to of 95453

NYMEX crude, heat oil up on short covering NEW YORK, March 2 (Reuters) - Crude and heating oil futures posted early gains Tuesday on short covering ahead of the weekly American Petroleum Institute (API) inventory data due later in the day, traders said. At 1124 EST/1624 GMT, crude for April delivery traded 14 cents up at $12.38 a barrel, up 11 cents. After opening slightly higher than expected at $12.32, the front month contract rose to an early high of $12.43. Heating oil futures logged moderate gains, coinciding with forecasts of a return of seasonal weather to the key heating oil consuming Northeast region by Saturday. Front month heating oil was up 0.21 cent at 32.15 cents a gallon, but was trending lower after it hit a midmorning low of 32.00 cents. April gasoline traded at 37.60 cents a gallon, down 0.18 cent. The contract traded between 37.40/38.10 cents. April Brent crude at the International Petroleum Exchange in London tarded 10 cents up at $10.83 a barrel at 1126 EST/1526 GMT. On the NYMEX, one trader said gasoline's bearishness was partly due to news on Monday that Valero Energy Corp. was likely to restart its 85,000 barrels per day (bpd) crude unit in Houston soon, as long as margins continue to improve. In other refinery news, Tosco Corp. was expected to respond today to a letter by the Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors, which asked that the company volunarily shut its Avon refinery in Martinez, Calif., while safety concerns are addressed after four men died in a fire at the plant last week. The plant has a capacity of 100,000 barrels per day of crude. Traders said they were watching for news from Iraq, following suspension of operations at a pipeline between Iraq and Turkey due to U.S. air strikes Sunday and Monday. A U.S. military spokesman in Ankara said early Tuesday that there were no air strikes by U.S. forces on Tuesday. On Monday, oil markets on both sides of the Atlantic shrugged off the suspension of operations at the pipeline as traders and analysts said the current supply overhang could absorb the temporary loss of supply from Iraq. Meanwhile, seasonal weather is expected to return to the Northeast this weekend while temperatures of about 2-4 degrees below normal are expected to arrive in the Chicago area by Saturday, private forecaster Weather Services Corp. said. The six- to 10-day National Weather Service forecast (Sunday through Thursday) showed below-normal temperatures in the west and stretchingeastward across the nation's mid-section Last week, the API reported a build of 1.9 million barrels in U.S. crude stocks. The U.S. Department of Energy, which releases its own weekly data on Wednesday morning, reported a much larger build of 3.0 million barrels. Despite the build, however, the market moved up on technical factors.