Very bad news on the fuel front today folks, as the price of a barrel of crude hit a new all-time high. Crude shot up $5 a barrel today, closing at 104.52. In a somewhat ominous sign for tomorrow, after-hours trading has oil now trading at a price of 104.95.

The uptick comes after the government reported a larger than expected decline in the inventory levels of crude, and OPEC said publicly that it has no plans to change its current production levels. Oh, and yes, the dollar also hit new all-time lows against the euro.

Take it all together and you’ve get the perfect recipe for higher oil prices.

The Energy Information Agency said today that crude inventories fell for the first week in eight, dropping 3.1 million barrels to stand at 305.4 million barrels for  the week ending Feb. 29. Analysts surveyed by commodities information provider Platts had been expecting an increase of 2.1 million barrels for the week.

And if you are wondering about gasoline, the news was not good here either, as April reformulated gasoline gained 11.3 cents to $2.6421 a gallon and April heating oil rallied 15.13 cents to $2.9431 a gallon on Tuesday, the highest closing level a front-month contract has ever seen.

Yep. $3 a gallon for heating oil.

Delta/Northwest Pilots “Talking”

A number of news organizations are reporting today that pilots leaders from both airlines are meeting today in an effort to come to some kind of seniority agreement for the two pilot groups.



Mary Schlangenstein and Mary Jane Credeur reported today in Bloomberg that the sessions, which started yesterday, are the first between the airlines’ work groups since negotiators failed to agree two weeks ago on how to combine the seniority rankings of 12,000 pilots.

This week’s meetings involve “leaders of the pilot groups at the two carriers and don’t yet involve the full merger committees for each union chapter,” according to sources cited in the story.