Oil Rises as Hurricane Ike Moves Toward Gulf of Mexico

Oil rose by nearly $3 to more than $109 a barrel early Monday on concerns that Hurricane Ike could reach the Gulf of Mexico later this week, Bloomberg reported.

Crude futures rose $2.89 to $109.12 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, Bloomberg said. Oil fell $9 last week to close Friday at $106.23 as Hurricane Gustav spared key oil installations and refineries on the Gulf Coast.

Hurricane Ike was over Cuba early Monday as a Category 2 storm and was expected to move into the Gulf of Mexico Tuesday, where it could intensify into a Category 3 storm, on the Saffir-Simpson scale, which runs from categories 1 through 5, Bloomberg said.

Ike’s track was likely to run toward the Texas-Louisiana border, where many oil refineries are, according to projections by the National Hurricane Center.

The Energy Department comes out with its weekly survey of diesel and gasoline pump prices Monday afternoon, which have fallen for the past seven and eight weeks, respectively.