Oil Hits Record Near $120 a Barrel
Crude oil prices hit an all-time record in Monday, hitting $119.93 a barrel in pre-market electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange, the Associated Press reported.
The increase was pegged to a weekend refinery strike that closed a key North Sea refinery in Scotland and to unrest in Nigeria, AP said.
Demand is high for Nigeria’s light, sweet crude oil, which is easily refined, AP said, but that country’s unrest has reduced capacity to about 75% of its official production capacity of 2.5 million barrels per day.
The Energy Department comes out with its weekly survey of filling station gasoline and diesel prices Monday afternoon.
