Christian Little

An increase in the amount of jobs lost in the United Stated in December 2009 has shocked everyone. This has caused concern that the economy there and the demand for fuel will be slower to recover than was expected. The loss of 85000 jobs in December caused crude oil to fall by about one percent. But crude oil reserves rose and with plummeting temperatures set to continue, futures rose to the highest level for the last fourteen months.

The expected recovery of the United States economy is now not looking as positive as before with the release of these figures. The recovery of payroll figures will be much slower too according to many experts. Because of this, the crude oil reserves have increased with the dip in consumer confidence. Last week there was an increase in the crude oil inventories of 1.33 million barrels and the gasoline inventories rose by 3.74 million barrels.

Crude oil may fall next week as there is increased speculation that the amount of crude oil in reserve will again rise next week. It is expected that the price will go down with the increase of supplies on hand. The cost of oil should fall if there is more supply than demand just as if the demand becomes greater than the supply, then the price usually rises quite sharply. But we will just have to wait and see. One thing is for sure, the hopes for a quick economic recovery seem to have been frozen in their tracks with the news of those job losses in December.

There must be hope however, that things will start to improve with the American economy and that the rest of the world can follow suit. There needs to be an increased demand for fuel before signs will show us that things are on the right track.

Getting the home heated up during winter can be very expensive. Electricity and gas prices are very high and show no signs of coming down any time soon. Clever people are switching to heating oil as a fuel though. After the changeover they have to make sure that the storage tanks are always full of heating oil to ensure they never run out.