Glitch
in PDVSA-Amerada Hess HOVENSA refinery in St. Croix panics oil
traders
PDVSA-Amerada
Hess HOVENSA refinery in St. Croix
Petroleumworld
CARACAS
Petroleumworld.com
03 15 06
Gasoline and crude oil futures prices jumped up 7.67 cents to
$1.82 a gallon in afternoon trade on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
Tuesday on word that the large 495,000 barrels per day refinery
in St. Croix will be down for two weeks, according to AP.
A
spokesman for Amerada Hess Corp. said Tuesday it unexpectedly
shut a gasoline producing unit over the weekend at the Hovensa
refinery in St. Croix it co-owns with Petroleos de Venezuela SA.
The spokesman said repairs to the unit, which refines 150,000
barrels of crude per day, could take up to two weeks.
Also putting
some upward pressure on prices were analyst expectations U.S.
government data released Wednesday will show a decline in gasoline
inventories from a week ago.
Light sweet
crude for April delivery gained 48 cents to $62.25 a barrel on
Nymex.
Meanwhile,
the International Energy Agency, a watchdog for the world's energy
consumers, on Tuesday lowered its 2006 oil demand estimate by
290,000 barrels per day because of persistently high fuel prices
and slowing consumption in Southeast Asia.
NYMEX
oil prices surged $1.81 Monday to settle at $61.77 on nagging
concerns about unrest in Nigeria and the possibility of U.N. sanctions
against Iran, the No. 2 producer within OPEC, for its nuclear
ambitions.
In Nigeria,
recent attacks by militants on pipelines and oil facilities have
left the country's production down by about 400,000 barrels a
day.
"We would
expect the potential for further chaos in Nigeria to provide a
floor for prices around $60 a barrel, and we expect Nigeria will
continue to be a major issue in terms of supply security up to,
and probably beyond, next year's elections," wrote Barclays
Capital's analysts in a research note.
In
other NYMEX trading, heating oil futures climbed more than 5 cents
to $1.789 per gallon, and natural gas futures rose 7.3 cents to
$7.08 per 1,000 cubic feet.
Source
AP
Petroleumworld 03 14 06
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