Crude Oil Closes Above $60 Following Refinery Fires

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rude oil prices hit $61 a barrel Friday before falling back to close at $60.57 a barrel following reports of oil refinery fires in Louisiana and Texas, news services reported.

Benchmark light sweet crude oil futures rose 63 cents from Thursday’s closing price of $59.94 after an explosion at BP’s Texas City, Texas, plant Thursday night, the Associated Press reported.

BP said the fire was out Friday and that output was little changed, Bloomberg reported.

That had followed a fire at Murphy Oil Corp.'s 120,000-barrel-a-day diesel hydrotreater facility in Louisiana, which removes sulfur from fuel, AP said.

U.S. refineries were operating at 93.5% capacity last week, up 0.7% from a week earlier, according to a weekly Department of Energy report issued July 27.

Crude oil futures prices hit an all-time record high of $62.10 on July 7.

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