Heating oil spikes, but oil futures market unstable

23 July 2010

Written by Neil Brunskill

The sharp rally in crude and heating oil futures yesterday belies a more subdued outlook for trading in energy commodities.

Heating oil futures contracts on the New York Mercantile Exchange (Nymex) rose more than seven cents to settle at $2.0624 a gallon yesterday and have continued to rise this morning.

Data compiled by Bloomberg shows that trading volumes on the Nymex and the ICE Futures Europe exchange fell 13.2 per cent in the 60 days up to July 20th.

The last time interest in oil futures fell by a larger margin was in the aftermath of the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008.

"There's very little conviction among our customer base in terms of where we are in the global economic cycle," said Sabine Schels, a commodity strategist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

Yesterday's rally, seen in both crude and heating oil futures, was stoked by warnings that Tropical Storm Bonnie is on a collision course with energy infrastructure in the Gulf of Mexico.