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NEW YORK - Oil prices leaped to US$90 yesterday as a deadly Midwest ice storm briefly paralysed several big pipelines feeding a key US crude storage hub and fog delayed shipping along the Texas coast.
A decision by the US Federal Reserve to cut interest rates by a quarter percentage point was also seen as supporting commodities prices by potentially reviving economic growth and weakening the value of the dollar.
US oil settled up US$2.16 at US$90.02 a barrel, while London Brent crude rose US$1.95 to US$89.99.
"Today is mostly about ice and fog, and less about the Fed cut," said Peter Beutel, president of Cameron Hanover in New Canaan, Connecticut.
A deadly ice storm in the US heartland brought operations at the Cushing, Oklahoma, storage hub - delivery point for US crude futures - to a near standstill for several hours yesterday.
The storm knocked out power to more than 800,000 customers and forced Enbridge and TEPPCO to shut more than 20 million barrels of oil terminal storage.
Several pipelines, including the Seaway pipeline that carries 350,000 barrels a day from the Gulf Coast, also reduced or halted throughput, before restarting later in the day.
Adding support, fog along the Texas coast delayed more than 60 vessels from entering the nation's biggest petrochemical ports.
- Reuters
