Soaring oil just below $55
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-10-15 14:09

Oil prices are holding firm at nearly $55 a barrel as traders fear time is running out to top up lowly heating oil supplies before winter.

U.S. light, sweet crude oil futures were at $54.64 a barrel on Friday, down 12 cents after having ended on Thursday within a stone's throw of a new all-time high of $54.88 a barrel.

"We may get a bit of profit-taking here, but there's a real supply fear and I think prices will hold," said a London-based futures broker.

Oil has soared nearly $20 in less than four months, lately spurred by a lingering U.S. Gulf production outage that has led to a global shortage of light, easy-to-refine crude oil, coveted for its ability to make transport and heating fuels.

That shortfall has also impeded refiners' ability to build up U.S. heating oil stocks, which are now 10 percent below last year at 50 million barrels, weekly government's data on Thursday showed. Last week supplies were only 6 percent below 2003.

Total distillate supplies also fell to 8 percent below last year, while crude oil stocks rose over the week but remained 3.6 percent under year-ago levels.

In the Gulf of Mexico, around 470,000 barrels per day (bpd) of production remains shut more than a month after Hurricane Ivan hit the area, with some losses expected to linger beyond the end of the year, the government's resource agency said this week.

U.S. heating oil futures soared to a record $1.55 a gallon on Thursday and were trading at $1.5446 a gallon on Friday.

Supplies in the U.S. Central Atlantic region, a major distibution point for the heavy consuming Northeast, are running particularly below average and may have trouble rising before cold weather causes demand to spike.

"If, indeed, heating oil inventories have peaked for this key region, then there is little likelihood that heating oil prices will ease significantly this winter," the Energy Information Administration said on Thursday.

The shortage is also evident in other major regions, with consumers in Germany, Europe's biggest heating oil market, keeping their supplies of heating oil well below last year due to high prices, trading sources said.

German end-user tanks were only 60 percent full at the start of this month versus 68 percent last year, traders said, while in Japan, the world's third-biggest energy user, kerosene supplies are more than 15 percent below last year.

As fears of a winter fuel squeeze dominate traders' near-term perspective, signs are emerging that China's massive oil thirst -- a major factor in this year's price spike -- could slacken as the government moves to prevent the booming economy overheating.

Double-digit oil demand growth from China, the world's second-biggest importer, took the world by surprise this year, stretching OPEC supplies to near their limit.

But the West's energy watchdog said the surge in fuel costs was encouraging conservation measures and switching away from oil. A trader in London said major Asian refiners had scaled back purchases of African oil this month.

Pressure is also easing in Nigeria, the fifth-biggest supplier to the United States, as a general strike that paralysed businesses but did not disrupt oil flows, ended on Thursday.

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