Oil Prices Creep Lower
Energy futures were mostly lower Monday as concerns about extreme weather hampering production in the Gulf of Mexico dissipated.
November light sweet crude slid 67 cents to $80.95 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Reformulated gasoline was down 3 cents at $2.08 a gallon, and heating oil lost 2.5 cents to finish at $2.23 a gallon.
Near-term natural gas gained 29 cents to $6.37 per million British thermal units.
Tropical storm Jerry, which threatened oil and gas installations in the Gulf of Mexico over the weekend, is moving into colder waters and has been downgraded to a tropical depression.
Operators in the Gulf shut in roughly 63% of oil and gas production ahead of the storm late last week. They are now bringing their production back on line.
Meanwhile, stocks were mostly lower. The
Dow Jones U.S. Oil and Gas Index
fell 0.8% to 654.
Chevron
(CVX) - Get Report
gave back 0.5% to $94.35, and
Exxon Mobil
(XOM) - Get Report
lost 0.6% to $91.73.
Elsewhere, Chinese oil giant
PetroChina
(PTR) - Get Report
jumped 8.3% to $181.12 after announcing that it will list 4 billion shares on the Shanghai stock exchange.