Your taxes went up seven percent this week---not a peep out of the
no-tax clique or any mention that Denmark got off the fossil energy
hamster wheel.---who needs to copy a successfal role model anyway.
NEW YORK -- Oil prices neared $49 a barrel yesterday, capping a rise of
7 percent for the week, as Gulf of Mexico crude production rebounded at
a slower-than-expected rate in the wake of Hurricane Ivan.
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Light crude for November delivery rose 42 cents to settle at a new high
of $48.88 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The price of
oil is up 73 percent from a year ago.
The federal Minerals Management Service reported yesterday that daily
oil production in the Gulf remains 27 percent below normal at about 1.2
million barrels per day -- the same level as Thursday.
The agency said 10 million barrels of oil, the equivalent of 1.7 percent
of annual production in the region, have been lost since last Monday,
when offshore producers began evacuating crews.
"There continues to be hope for a quicker rebound in output," said John
Kilduff, senior oil analyst at Fimat USA in New York. Yesterday's
"figures confirmed that little or no progress was made" Thursday.
While the domestic supply problems caused by Hurricane Ivan are expected
to be short-lived, analysts said underlying tightness in global oil
markets is not.
The amount of excess oil production available worldwide is about 1
percent of total demand of about 82 million barrels a day, leaving the
industry little breathing room in the event of a prolonged supply
interruption, according to many analysts.
Potential output disruptions in Iraq, Russia, and other key
oil-producing nations have kept oil traders jittery.
For example, one factor that may have contributed to yesterday's rise in
prices was violence in Nigeria that forced Royal Dutch/Shell
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Group, which accounts for roughly half the country's daily exports of
2.5 million barrels, to evacuate two oil facilities.