:worried:UTTOH!
01/23/2009 - Updated 1:47 PM ET
Crude-oil futures rally, reversing sharp losses
By Polya Lesova, MarketWatch
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Oil futures rallied 6% in a very volatile session Friday, reversing their earlier sharp losses as U.S. stocks also rebounded from their lows.
Crude oil for March delivery was last up $2.44, or 5.6%, to $46.10 a barrel on Globex after soaring to an intraday high of $47 a barrel.
The rise is "short-covering ahead of the weekend," said Kevin Kerr, editor of Global Commodities Alert.
"It seems traders are starting to get a bit gun-shy about over-shorting this market and don't see much sustained downside form this level," Kerr said. "The watchword is caution, now that the pendulum has swung so far to the downside."
On Wall Street, U.S. stocks reversed early losses to trade higher, with the S&P 500 index [
SPX] rising 0.9%.
Earlier Thursday, oil had fallen to an intraday low of $41.40 a barrel, pressured by rising inventories and worries about the severity of the global economic downturn.
In Europe, Britain's economy contracted at its fastest quarterly pace in nearly 29 years during the final three months of 2008, according to government data. This marked a result even worse than most economists' pessimistic expectations, as gross domestic product shrank by 1.5%.
The sharp deterioration in the world economy has led to a steep decline in energy demand and resulted in the recent sharp slide in oil prices, which have tumbled 51% over the last 12 months.
On Thursday, oil futures staged another intraday reversal, with prices ending slightly higher after falling sharply earlier in the session on a very bearish update on U.S. petroleum stockpiles.
The Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported that U.S. crude supplies rose by 6.1 million barrels to stand at 332.7 million barrels during the week ended Jan. 16. The build was much higher than the 1.9 million barrels analysts had expected.
Inventory levels at Cushing, Okla. -- the delivery point for oil futures used on the New York Mercantile Exchange -- rose 200,000 barrels to reach a record 33.2 million barrels, the government's data showed.
Also on Globex, March reformulated gasoline rose 6 cents, or 5%, to $1.18 a gallon and March heating oil gained 8 cents, or 6%, to $1.43 a gallon.
Natural-gas supplies fell by 176 billion cubic feet to stand at 2,560 billion cubic feet for the week ended Jan. 16, the EIA reported Friday.
Analysts at IHS Global Insight had expected a storage withdrawal of 149 billion cubic feet.
After the data, February natural gas futures fell 16 cents, or 3%, at $4.52 per million British thermal units.
http://markets.usatoday.com/custom/...S&guid={D9C17DA9-783D-419E-A5CB-AF1074135898}