Oil Falls to Two-Month Low $88.14 Per Barrel

Frank Polich/Bloomberg News

Oil fell to less than $89 a barrel — a two-month low — following a Department of Energy report that showed crude output rose to an almost 16-year high last week, Bloomberg reported.

Crude futures fell $3.75 to finish at $88.14 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange following the DOE report, Bloomberg said.

DOE said crude output rose by 11,000 barrels a day to 6.52 million bbd last week, the most since December 1996.

Fuel demand slipped 0.3% to 18.3 million bbd in the four weeks ended Sept. 28, the lowest level since April, the department said in its weekly inventories report.

With the exception of last Wednesday, when it closed at $89.98, oil has not finished a Nymex trading day below $90 a barrel since Aug. 2.

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DOT Freight Transportation Index Falls 0.9%

The Department of Transportation’s freight transportation services index fell 0.9% in August from the same month last year, DOT said Thursday.

The freight TSI fell 0.6% to a reading of 109.0 from July, DOT said. The index uses a baseline 100 reading from the year 2000.

August shipments were 4.4% below the all-time high level of 114.0 in December 2011.

The freight TSI is a seasonally adjusted monthly index measuring the output of services provided by the for-hire transportation industries, including railroad, air, truck, inland waterways, pipeline and local transit.

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Oil Falls as Isaac Slams New Orleans

Bill Lang/Trans Pixs

Oil prices fell to below $96 a barrel Wednesday as analysts saw limited production disruptions even as Hurricane Isaac made landfall into New Orleans overnight, Bloomberg reported.

Crude futures fell 84 cents to finish the trading day at at as $95.49 a barrel after closing Tuesday at $96.33, the highest New York Mercantile Exchange closing price in a week, Bloomberg said.

Also Wednesday, the Department of Energy said in its weekly inventory report that crude supplies rose last week by 3.8 million barrels, compared with the 1.5 million-barrel downturn forecasted by analysts, Bloomberg reported.

Gasoline inventories fell 1.5 million barrels, in line with forecasts, while distillates, which include diesel, rose by almost 1 million barrels, more than the 200,000-barrel increase forecast, Bloomberg said.

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Unemployment Rate Falls to 8.6%; Trucking Adds 3,600 Jobs

The unemployment rate dropped in November to 8.6%, the lowest in more than two and a half years, while the economy added 120,000 jobs, including 3,600 trucking jobs, the Labor Department said Friday.

Total transportation and warehousing sector employment rose by 8,300 workers, Labor figures showed.

The unemployment rate, which fell from 9% in October, marked the lowest level since March 2009.

Economists had projected that the unemployment rate would hold at 9% and the jobs gain was slightly below economists’ forecasts of 125,000, Bloomberg reported.

The payrolls gain followed a revised 100,000 increase in October that was larger than the 80,000 originally reported.

The payroll and unemployment figures are obtained by separate surveys, with payrolls from a survey of employers and the unemployment rate from a survey of households.

Factory employment edged up by 2,000 after a 6,000 increase the previous month, while service employment climbed by 126,000 jobs.

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