Crude Oil Price Gains as Potential New Hurricane Forms

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rude oil and wholesale gasoline prices rose Monday on reports that a new tropical storm in the southern Caribbean Sea could form into a hurricane and move north into the Gulf of Mexico later this week, news services reported.

Tropical Storm Wilma, the 21st named storm of the hurricane season, was off the coast of Honduras near the Cayman Islands, and forecasts showed the storm could move into the Gulf by the weekend, the Associated Press reported Monday.

Forecasters predicted warm water temperatures and other conditions were favorable for the storm to become a significant hurricane, AP said.

Benchmark light sweet crude oil futures rose $$1.67 to $64.30 a barrel toward the end of the 2:30 p.m. close of the trading day on the New York Mercantile Exchange, and wholesale gasoline futures also rose, Bloomberg reported.

Crude oil hit a record high of $70.85 Aug. 30 following Hurricane Katrina’s landfall near New Orleans and since then has generally drifted to the low-$60s a barrel.

Wilma is the last on the list of storm names for 2005; there are 21 names on the annual list because the letters q, u, x, y and z are skipped.

If more storms form, letters from the Greek alphabet will be used, starting with Alpha, though that has never happened in about 60 years of regularly named Atlantic storms, AP reported.

The six-month hurricane season ends Nov. 30.