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rude oil futures jumped $4.39 — a one-day record increase — to $67.39 a barrel Monday following reports of a potential new hurricane, currently Tropical Storm Rita, which could disrupt Gulf of Mexico oil production later this week, news services reported.
Oil reached a record $70.85 a barrel on Aug. 30 after Hurricane Katrina shut refineries and curtailed production in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico. Since then, they had fallen to $63 a barrel on Friday, Bloomberg reported.
Meanwnile, OPEC ministers meeting in Vienna, Austria, agreed to maintain current production quotas and to offer spare oil production capacity to any customers that ask for extra oil, the group's president said Monday.
OPEC’s members can another 2 million barrels a day, and the decision will be completed and announced formally following OPEC's meeting Tuesday, Bloomberg reported.
Any additional oil will have to come from Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil producer, which is able to pump lower quality, sour crude oil that few refineries are available to handle, Bloomberg said.
OPEC members last week had been expected to increase their quota, facing pressure from consuming nations to lower prices, Bloomberg reported.
