Oil, Oil Prices | featured news

With gasoline prices hovering at $4 a gallon nationally, many Americans are making tough choices: scaling back summer vacations, driving less or ditching the car altogether. Some seniors are choosing a tank of gas over their prescriptions....

Rex Tillerson, the boss of ExxonMobil admitted last week that the price of oil–based purely on supply and demand- should be in the $60 to $70 a barrel range. The reason it’s above $100 a barrel, Tillerson explained, is due to the oil majors using futures contracts to lock in current high prices, and speculation that is engineered by the high-frequency trading of quantitative hedge funds.

Oil prices tumbled nearly 5 percent on Wednesday, as easing supply concerns sent gasoline into a tailspin that briefly forced trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange to stop.

Oil prices plummeted by almost 9 percent on Thursday as traders worried that American drivers were beginning to balk at the price of gasoline.

Chevron says first-quarter earnings rose 36 percent. The company received higher prices for the oil it produced, and also made more money from refining oil.

Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell Plc reported big jumps in first quarter earnings and beat forecasts, thanks to high oil prices and healthy refining margins.

After seeing oil prices skyrocket from days of turmoil in Libya, investors now must grapple with political protests in the world's top oil exporter, Saudi Arabia, and the impact of Japan's biggest earthquake on record.

Oil prices tumbled 3 percent Thursday, as economists warned that the recent surge in fuel prices will eventually hurt the fragile economic recovery....

Rising fuel prices have forced Southwest Airlines to raise ticket prices, but the Dallas-based carrier is also focusing on efficiency measures to lower its fuel consumption, president and CEO Gary Kelly said Monday.

Thursday rally a distant memory as crude surges over $104 and Dow hits session lows.