London (Platts)--14Sep2007

Global crude futures retraced some of the gains made Thursday, after
refinery outages in the US switched the focus from crude to refined products
as well as profit-taking ahead of the weekend, market sources said.

     At 09:21 GMT, the October NYMEX WTI futures contract was at $79.63/b,
down 46 cents/b and the October ICE WTI contract traded at $79.61/b, down 48
cents/b.

     On Thursday, October NYMEX WTI hit $80.20/b in intra day trading and
$80.09/b at the close, the second consecutive day both values reached all
time highs.

     "WTI is off a little at the start of the day. At $80/b every bit of
bullish news has been built into the price, so there is less appetite by funds
to go long at this level," said a London-based broker.

     "The momentum on WTI was slowed...by the USG refineries power-failure
shutdowns that will slow down any draws of crude oil stocks and mitigate some
of the delays in Mexican supplies due to Dean," said oil analysts Petromatrix
in a daily report.

     On Thursday Hurricane Humberto hit landfall in the USGC and although it
was not particularly strong, it did cause some disruption.

     Total's 232,000 b/d Port Arthur refinery was completely shut due to a
power outage, while Valero's 325,000 b/d Port Arthur facility was also closed
due to a power outage caused by Humberto.

     This factor suggests higher demand, and prices, for products at a time
that crude supplies in the region are shut in.

     The new front month November ICE Brent futures contract traded at
$76.75/b, down 37 cents/b. The Brent Nov-Dec spread was weaker at plus 67
cents/b, a far shallower backwardation than presently shown on WTI.

     Adding a possible bearish element to Brent, Iraq's State Oil Marketing
Organization issued a tender for the sale of 5 million barrels of Kirkuk crude
oil for loading from the Turkish port of Ceyhan before October 5.

     The tender closes on September 21, according to sources.
     In refined products, October ICE gasoil traded at $690.50/mt, up 75
cents/mt. On NYMEX, the October heating oil contract was at $2.2053/gal, down
1.37 cents and October gasoline was down $2.0345/gal, down 1.19 cents.
--Paul Hailey, paul_hailey@platts.com