Forexpros – Crude oil futures briefly pushed above the USD100.00 per barrel mark on Thursday due to sharply lower inventories and strong U.S. leading indicators.
On the New York Mercantile Exchange, light sweet crude futures for January settlement traded at USD99.89 a barrel during late U.S. trade, advancing 1.22%.
It earlier hit a daily high of USD100.03 a barrel.
Slight weakness in the U.S. dollar helped push crude prices higher.
The dollar index, which tracks the performance of the greenback versus a basket of six other major currencies, gave back 0.10% to trade at 80.27.
Dollar weakness normally helps commodity prices, as it increases their appeal as an alternative asset and makes dollar priced commodities less expensive for holders of other currencies.
Jobless claims in the U.S. dropped by 4000 last week and leading indicators beat forecasts.
Meanwhile, U.S. oil supplies hit decade lows fueling the bullish advance.
Tom Bentz, of BNP Paribas Prime Brokerage explained the rally to Bloomberg, ” We are in a uptrend and may have further to go. The inventory number yesterday surprised a lot of people and the jobless numbers today gave us an initial boost but we ran into resistance around USD100.00.”
Elsewhere, on the ICE Futures Exchange, Brent oil futures for February delivery added 0.39% to trade at USD108.14 a barrel, up USD8.25 on its U.S. Counterpart.
This nearly USD10.00 spread has been narrowing recently, but is still historically high. The two contracts traditionally trade within USD1.00 of each other.
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