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After a string of losses during the week, crude-oil futures got no help from a better-than-expected U.S. jobs data that rallied equities and the dollar on Friday.
Fluctuating throughout the European session, sweet crude futures for delivery in November traded at $90.82 a barrel, down $0.21 in the Globex electronic session and losing a gain of 60 cents seen in Asian trade. For the week, crude was set to lose 3.4%, which would mark the biggest weekly loss for an active contract since August. The oil slide, occurred even as data showed the U.S. economy added 248,000 jobs in September, and the unemployment rate fell below 6% for the first time since 2008, both segments exceeding expectations. U.S. stock futures rallied hard on the back of the jobs news, and the dollar also rose, while crude fell in response. Other data showed record oil exports for August, which triggered a slip in the trade gap.
Deeper losses were seen on London’s ICE Futures exchange where November Brent crude slid $1.23, or 1.4%, to $92.18 a barrel. The commodity has been hit hard in the last three trading sessions, settling at its lowest since June 2012 on Thursday, spooked by Saudia Arabian price cuts. Brent is set to finish the week with a loss of nearly 5%. That would mark the worst weekly loss for an active contract since February.
Grim forecasts for oil: Analysts at Citigroup said in a note Thursday there’s a higher probability that oil prices will fall than rise in the near future. Risk of lower demand from China, some reduced global growth expectations overall and a dollar that is appreciating more rapidly than expected are creating headwinds for major commodity prices.
On a trade-weighed index, the dollar is up 7.4% this year. Elsewhere in the energy complex, gasoline for November delivery fell 5 cents, or 2%, to $2.3596 a gallon. On Thursday, gasoline settled at $2.4091, which was the lowest settlement price for a gasoline front-month contract since January 2011. Heating oil for November lost 3 cents, or 1%, to $2.6133 a gallon. The contract looked set to take out Thursday’s lowest settlement price since June 2012 of $2.6380.