THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: Crude Ends Steady After Rally Fizzles, Petroleum Weakens: Output was curtailed after an explosion on a Royal Dutch Shell PLC-operated pipeline in the area, after the abduction of four workers from a Shell-operated offshore-oil facility. The supply outage, along with increasing concerns about Iran's nuclear program, sparked a rally that briefly lifted prices above $65 a barrel for the first time since October.: Friday 13 January 2006

By MASOOD FARIVAR

DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

January 13, 2006; Page C3

EXTRACT

Crude oil finished steady amid falling heating-oil and gasoline prices after rallying above $65 on production outages in Nigeria.

The early rally came after reports that attacks on Nigerian oil fields had shut down as many as 226,000 barrels a day of crude-oil production in the country's Niger Delta. Output was curtailed after an explosion on a Royal Dutch Shell PLC-operated pipeline in the area, after the abduction of four workers from a Shell-operated offshore-oil facility.

The supply outage, along with increasing concerns about Iran's nuclear program, sparked a rally that briefly lifted prices above $65 a barrel for the first time since October.

With petroleum products continuing to weaken and natural-gas prices dropping below $9 a million British thermal units for the first time since August, traders said crude had gotten ahead of itself. The U.S. yesterday reported a smaller-than-expected build in natural-gas storage.

The February crude contract on the New York Mercantile Exchange settled unchanged at $63.94 a barrel after briefly rising as high as $65.05 a barrel.

"You have a potential topping pattern in place which would be confirmed by a down market" today, said Chris McCormack, broker and technical analyst with ABN Amro in New York. "A break of $63.50 should lead to a sustained period of weakness."

February heating oil slid 1.58 cents to $1.7113 a gallon. February gasoline fell 1.46 cents to $1.7185 a gallon.

Since the beginning of the year, crude prices have surged amid increasing tensions between Western nations and Iran as petroleum-product prices have fallen sharply on slack demand and rising inventories. The trend is a bearish portent for the oil market, said Jim Ritterbusch, president of Ritterbusch & Associates in Galena, Ill.

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