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The price of oil climbed, reversing earlier falls, on the back of the weakening dollar.

US light sweet crude added $1.16 to 114.03 a barrel, while in London, Brent crude added 99 cents to $112.93.

The dollar weakened against the euro after official US data showed inflation was quickening, helping push up oil and other commodities such as gold.

Investors tend to buy commodities as the greenback weakens because it makes such investments relatively cheaper.

Earlier in the day, oil had fallen below $112 a barrel after Tropical Storm Fay avoided oil operations in the Gulf of Mexico. ...

The global financial crisis is set to get worse, with a large US bank likely to collapse in the next few months, a former IMF chief economist has warned.

Kenneth Rogoff's comments came as shares in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac sank on a report that the home lenders would, in effect, be nationalised.

Despite hopes that the US economy had turned the corner, Mr Rogoff claimed it was "not out of the woods".

"I would even go further to say 'the worst is to come'," he said.

"We're not just going to see mid-sized banks go under in the next few months," said Mr Rogoff, who held the IMF role between 2001 and 2004. ...

Commodities are not like equities. They are produced; they have got inherent value called cost of produce. They operate in band. And any extremes in pricing are opportunities to be grabbed. Given time they readjust to their core value. Commodities are part of our life for ages. Our consumption has never decreased for centuries. So there is no bubble which can burst.

This is the reason why many joint stock companies have come and gone but the commodities have remained where they were.

Talking of commodity pricing, the demand and supply discovers price premium to cost of produce. There are certain factors of apprehensions regarding availability of certain natural exhaustible resource commodities since there consumption is increasing year after year resulting continuous raise of these prices. ...

World oil prices edged higher this morning as traders worried about the potential impact of Tropical Storm Fay on energy facilities in the Gulf of Mexico.

London's Brent crude advanced by 22 cents to $112.77 a barrel, while US crude added eight cents to $113.85.

Crude oil prices had fallen sharply last week on the prospect of reduced demand for energy around the world.

Anglo-Dutch energy group Royal Dutch Shell said over the weekend that it had evacuated several hundred staff from the Gulf of Mexico region as a precautionary measure.

Tropical Storm Fay pummelled western Cuba early this morning and headed towards the Florida Keys after claiming at least 11 lives in the Dominican Republic and Haiti amid forecasts it would hit hurricane force....

Mounting fears about the likelihood of a global recession will be fuelled by this week’s data, which promise further bad news from the US housing market, disappointing inflation data and more evidence that industrial activity is weakening.

The US housing market remains moribund with the National Association of Home Builders index, due today, expected to remain at a record low of 16 in August. Housing starts for July, due out tomorrow, are expected to weaken from 1.07m in June to 960,000.

However, activity in the west of the US has started to revive with housing starts rising for the past three months....

U.S. stock futures pointed to a moderately lower open Wednesday as investors awaited a report on retail sales and as oil prices advanced.

Wall Street is eager for insights into the retail sector and the health of the consumer, whose spending is the key driver of the economy. Analysts expect Commerce Department figures to show sales were flat in July after a minor increase in June.

Economists predict sales will come in unchanged at $384.2 billion. Without a drag from weakness in autos, however, July's numbers are seen rising 0.5 percent, according to Thomson/IFR. The report is due at 8:30 a.m. EDT....

Whatever happens with the development of alternative fuels, and however much we economise on using energy, the world will be reliant on oil, gas and coal for decades. The challenge of developing conventional energy sources in an environmentally sustainable way is one of the most critical we face. We therefore need to create an institution imbued with sovereign powers to develop the massive fuel sources in the Arctic Circle. It would be a far-reaching step, but the stakes warrant a special attempt to take it.

Last month the US Geological Survey released the results of a four-year study showing that the Arctic Circle contains sufficient energy supplies to have a big impact on supply: 90bn barrels of oil, 1669 trillion cu ft of natural gas and 44bn barrels of natural gas liquids....

When the main pipeline that carries oil through Georgia was completed in 2005, it was hailed as a major success in the United States policy to diversify its energy supply. Not only did the pipeline transport oil produced in Central Asia, helping move the West away from its dependence on the Middle East, but it also accomplished another American goal: it bypassed Russia.

American policy makers hoped that diverting oil around Russia would keep the country from reasserting control over Central Asia and its enormous oil and gas wealth and would provide a safer alternative to Moscow’s control over export routes that it had inherited from Soviet days. The tug-of-war with Moscow was the latest version of the Great Game, the 19th-century contest for dominance in the region. ...

SINGAPORE -- Oil prices rose for a second day Thursday in Asia, approaching $117 a barrel after U.S. gasoline supplies fell more than expected in a weekly government report.

Light, sweet crude for September delivery rose 75 cents to $116.75 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange by midafternoon in Singapore. The contract jumped $2.99 overnight to settle at $116 a barrel.

"It's the first bright news for traders in the oil market in a while," said Gavin Wendt, head of mining and resources research at Fat Prophets in Sydney. "The dramatic drop-off in commodities, and specifically oil, has been well overdone in my view." ...

Aug. 14 -- Crude oil rose for a second day after a U.S. Energy Department report yesterday showed a bigger- than-forecast decline in inventories of gasoline as refiners shut units and imports fell.

Gasoline supplies dropped 6.39 million barrels to 202.8 million barrels last week, the biggest decline since October 2002, when tropical storms disrupted Gulf of Mexico output.

``The drop in gasoline inventories has boosted prices somewhat,'' said Eliane Tanner, an analyst at Credit Suisse Group in Zurich. ``Prices are at more sustainable levels so we shouldn't see much more of a correction lower.'' ...