By Eric Yep
Crude-oil futures edged higher in Asian trade Monday on reports
of a fire at oil storage terminals at a Libyan oil terminal.
On the New York Mercantile Exchange, light, sweet crude futures
for delivery in February traded at $55.37 a barrel at 0537 GMT, up
$0.64 in the Globex electronic session. February Brent crude on
London's ICE Futures exchange rose $0.47 to $59.92 a barrel.
Nymex crude lost 4.20% last week and Brent crude was down by
3.14% last week. Both the oil benchmarks have fallen for five
consecutive weeks.
"With persisting conflicts in Libya, crude export and production
continue to be unstable. Current estimates of crude output in Libya
stands at 352,000 barrels a day," analyst Daniel Ang at Singapore's
Phillip Futures said.
He said for the past week both Nymex WTI and Brent crude were
supported by short covering, but with 2015 just around the corner,
these support levels are waning.
"We expect both WTI and Brent to continue to trade range bound,"
Mr. Ang said, adding that towards the end of the week traders may
start resuming their short positions, pushing prices down
further.
Nymex reformulated gasoline blendstock for January--the
benchmark gasoline contract--rose 71 points to $1.5158 a gallon,
while January diesel traded at $1.9245, 166 points higher.
ICE gasoil for January changed hands at $540.50 a metric ton, up
$1.50 from Friday's settlement.
Write to Eric Yep at eric.yep@wsj.com