Commodities : Tuesday, March 25, 1986 : Energy Futures Strengthen

Energy futures prices regained some lift Tuesday, coming out of a tailspin prompted by the failure of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries to agree on production controls during its meeting in Geneva.

Most of the strength was in heating oil, which settled higher in all but one contract month at the New York Mercantile Exchange. The May crude oil contract was 12 cents a barrel higher, but other deliveries declined.

There was some dispute about the cause of the relative firmness, although analysts seemed to agree that the market sensed that lower stock and distillary run numbers would be coming out of the American Petroleum Institute after the close of trading.

“The market would have been off much sharper but for expectations about favorable API numbers,” said Ed Dellamonte, an analyst in New York with Prudential-Bache Securities.

Analyst Peter Beutel with Rudolf Wolff Energy agreed that the API expectations helped, but said the bearish news associated with the Geneva meeting breaking up was, in effect, canceled by the increased tensions between the United States and Libya.