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Crude Oil Finds Footing

Chuck Marvin

Oil futures steadied Thursday at the New York Mercantile Exchange after witnessing extremely volatile trading earlier in the week.

September light sweet crude was up 59 cents at $77.13 a barrel late in the session. Reformulated gasoline was unchanged at $2.04 a gallon, and heating oil edged a penny higher to $2.08 a gallon.

Near-term natural gas was down 16 cents to $6.19 per million British thermal units.

After moving into record territory Wednesday on momentum generated by the Energy Information Administration's petroleum inventory report, crude prices plummeted more than $2.

Crude's failure to either sustain record high levels or to puncture technical levels on the downside suggest that it may be entering a consistent trading range, according to Edward Meir, analyst at Man Financial.

Regardless of the large late-day drop last time out, prices will likely be supported in the near-term, Meir wrote in a research note. There "are no major fundamental bearish triggers that could induce more selling at this stage," he says.

"For that matter, we are nearing the sweet-spot of the hurricane season, while OPEC is still signaling that it will sit on its hands" at its next meeting in September.

Meanwhile, energy stocks were mostly lower. The CBOE Oil Index was down 1.5% at 740.34. ConocoPhillips (COP Quote) fell 1.1% to $79.89, Chevron (CVX Quote) was down 1.7% at $83.72, and Exxon Mobil(XOM Quote) slid 1.8% to $84.31.

Offshore driller Transocean (RIG Quote) reported that its second-quarter earnings more than doubled from the same period a year ago. However, its stock was trading 2.1% lower at $103.35.

Transocean merger partner GlobalSantaFe (GSF Quote) announced second-quarter earnings of $1.60 a share, compared with $1.01 a share a year earlier. Its shares were down 2.2% at $68.79.