When will they drop in Woodbury

Still $3.39 in woodbury and in chester $3.02
Oil Prices Fall Amid Signs of Less Demand
Thursday September 15, 2:15 pm ET
By Laura Carney, Associated Press Writer
Oil Prices Slide Below $65 Per Barrel Amid Signs of Diminishing Demand

NEW YORK (AP) -- Crude-oil prices slipped below $65 a barrel on Thursday as traders took profits amid signs that petroleum supplies were recovering and the recent surge in prices had caused demand to deflate.

"There will be some volatility to the market, but barring any other major disruptions, I think we'll continue to head lower in prices," said Agbeli Ameko, managing partner at Enercast.com.

Light, sweet crude for October delivery on the New York Mercantile Exchange fell 89 cents to $64.20 a barrel in midday trading.

Gasoline fell more than 6.23 cents to $1.875 a gallon, while heating oil fell more than 4.24 cents to $1.8825 a gallon.

On London's International Petroleum Exchange, October Brent crude fell 22 cents to $63.15 a barrel. Analysts had expected the October contract to dip ahead of its expiration later Thursday.

In a monthly report published Thursday, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries cut its 2005 world oil-demand forecast by 150,000 barrels a day, saying record high gasoline prices have pushed down forecasts for world oil demand.

World oil demand is forecast to grow 1.4 million barrels a day in 2005 and 1.5 million barrels a day in 2006 -- a downward revision of 200,000 barrels a day in both years, the report said.

These forecasts are likely to be revised again in the coming months as U.S. production recovers from Hurricane Katrina, the report added.

OPEC Acting Secretary General Adnan Shihab-Eldin told Dow Jones Newswires on Thursday that the cartel would consider increasing its production ceiling by almost 2 percent at its meeting Monday.

"OPEC has committed itself to ensure there's adequate supply," Shihab-Eldin said, "so the president has put forward a proposal to add 500,000 barrels a day to the ceiling if the market calls for it."

Shihab-Eldin said the cartel does not intend to alter its 2-year-old policy of allowing global inventories to build. The current ceiling for 10 of its 11 members, excluding Iraq, is 28 million barrels a day.

Also on Thursday, the International Energy Agency said it decided to preserve the 30-day emergency release of oil it had established on Sept. 2 in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, which will leave its stocks of 60 million barrels of oil and oil products available to the market.

While traders were not surprised at the IEA's decision, it served as further evidence that supplies should be adequate to prevent prices from spiking higher.

"Supply is coming back and people are beginning to feel more confident about oil futures," John Wood, natural gas expert at the Department of Energy, said.

Crude prices spiked nearly $2 following the Department of Energy's weekly petroleum data snapshot on Wednesday, closing at $65.09 a barrel, around 50 percent higher than a year ago.

The report showed that while crude stocks fell 6.6 million barrels to 308.4 million barrels due to lower imports and output lockdowns because of Hurricane Katrina, gasoline stocks grew a surprising 1.9 million barrels to 192 million commercially available barrels.

Associated Press Writer En-Lai Yeoh in Singapore and Edith Balazs in Budapest, Hungary, contributed to this report.