December delivery crude added $1.70 from Friday to $78.86 per barrel despite weak fundamentals. Investors are taking their cues from exchange rates, rather than supply and demand factors, a market analyst said.
"Again, prices are following changes in the exchange rate. In the oil market itself there is little bullish news. Now we are getting only weak statistics on the oil front," market analyst Christophe Barret at Calyon told MarketWatch.
Heating oil prices added 0.0659 cents Monday to $2.032 per gallon. Reformulated gasoline shed 0.0093 cents to $1.9775 per gallon.
Natural gas prices added 0.02 cents to $4.634 per million British thermal units.
At the pump, the national average price of unleaded gasoline was $2.631 per gallon Monday, down from Sunday's $2.635, AAA said.
Copyright 2009 by United Press International.
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