The third week of Libya’s turmoil continues, however, yesterday there weren’t any big changes in crude oil price; Natural gas prices rose to finish off the month of February.
Let’s review the main changes in major energy commodities market and precious metals for February 28th:
Oil and Gas prices:
Crude oil price (WTI spot) after rising on Friday by 1.25%, yesterday it started off the week with a small decline of 0.01% as it reached 96.97$/b.
Due to recent rises from the past week, WTI spot is being traded at a high level, nearing the high prices in late 2008. During February, WTI spot price inclined by 8.3%, solely due to the inclinations during last week. Consider that at the average February WTI spot price was 0.8% below the average price of January.
Brent spot price also moderately declined, as it fell yesterday by 0.13% to reach 111.94$/b.
As a result the spread between the Brent oil and WTI declined yesterday to 14.97$/b.
During the month of February, however, Brent spot price inclined by 11.5%.
Natural gas spot price (Henry Hub) inclined by 3.16%, to reach 3.92$/mmbtu.
The Nymex Henry Hub future prices (March Delivery) rose yesterday by 0.5%, reaching 4.03 $/mmbtu. As a result the Contango for the Henry Hub has reached 0.11$/mmbtu.
Furthermore, NY City gate price inclined yesterday by 3.39% to reach 4.27$/mmbtu.
Henry Hub spot price declined during February by 11.3%, and the Henry Hub future (short term) price decreased by 7.4%.
Precious Metals prices:
Gold price moderately inclined yesterday by 0.04%, as it reached 1,409$/t oz.
Silver prices, even more than gold prices, inclined yesterday by 2.72% and reached 33.82$/t oz.
During February (from beginning to end), gold completed a 5.2% rise, and silver completed an 18.6%.
EURO/ USD inclined moderately yesterday by 0.39%, the USD also depreciated against the AUD, as the AUD/USD moderately inclined by 0.09%. For a more detailed report on major currencies, check out Forex crunch.
A summary of yesterday’s Prices Changes:
The following table presents the main descriptive data from last business day – February 28th, for precious metals, energy commodities and exchange rates. The table includes: settled prices, daily percent change, and quantitative change in US dollars (except for USD/CAD, in which the change is in Canadian dollars):
For further reading (in this site):
- Petroleum stocks continue falling | review of WTI Brent spread – February 25
- Oil prices outlook – 28 February
- Oil prices soared as Libyan riots continued – Weekly recap 21-25 February
- Natural gas spot price fell but future rose – Weekly recap 21-25 February
Yearly Analysis and Outlook:
- Crude oil price in 2010 and outlook for 2011
- Natural gas spot price in 2010 and projection to 2011
- Gold Prices Outlook for 2011 and Analysis of 2010