New York-traded oil futures declined Thursday on worries about additional supplies coming from Libya, while gasoline futures rallied due to a refinery outage. On the New York Mercantile Exchange, light, sweet crude futures for delivery in November settled at $92.53 a barrel, down 27 cents, or 0.3%. November Brent crude on London’s ICE Futures exchange added 5 cents, or less than 0.1%, to end at $97 a barrel. Brent crude prices continued to trade in a narrow band after the U.S. and its allies stepped up airstrikes in Syria, this time targeting mobile oil refineries controlled by Islamic State. Elsewhere in energy, gasoline for October delivery rose 5.4 cents, or 2%, to settle at $2.7180 a gallon. An Irving Oil refinery in New Brunswick, Canada, shut down earlier this week, according to reports, and other refineries in the U.S. Gulf Coast have also shut down for unplanned repairs.
News that Libyan production rose its highest in more than year to 900,000 barrels a day and that a key Libyan exporting port there contributed to WTI’s lower prices and blunted Brent’s rise. New York-traded West Texas Intermediate had followed Brent earlier in the session, but a higher dollar pressured prices. A stronger dollar is a negative for commodities, which are priced in dollars, as it makes raw materials more expensive to holders of other currencies.