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Talk of the Town

VIEW UPDATE

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10:30am 4-15-08 OIL SETS NEW RECORD: $113 a Barrel; Unleaded Regular Now $3.38 Gal.
Tuesday, Apr 15, 2008 7:35pm

WALL STREET, NY From CNN (By: Tom Pace, Talk of the Town) BREAKING ECONOMY: 10:30am 4-15-08 Piggybacked on a weakened U.S. dollar against a rising euro, light sweet crude for May is nearly $114 a barrel this Tuesday.

Now here's the REALLY BIG QUESTION: Can $150 a barrel be far behind? More importantly: Can Americans still afford to continue their love affair with those gas-guzzling big trucks?

According to CNNMoney, traders are not taking into account Monday's news that Brazilian oil company Petrobras (PZE) may have made the largest oil discovery in 30 years.

According to Harold Lima, president of Brazil's National Petroleum Agency, the off-shore find could contain the equivalent of 33 billion barrels of crude, the world's third-largest oil reserve.

A find that large would normally put pressure on crude prices, said Omar Nokta, managing director of energy and commodities investment bank Dahlman Rose & Co. But the time & technology takes capitalize on new deep-water discoveries may be mitigating its affect on the markets.

"It's not going to happen overnight like it did 10 years ago," said Nokta. In a best-case scenario it would take a "good 5 years to fully develop a find," he added.

The new record for crude comes as both refined gasoline and diesel fuel reach record prices at the pump. According to a AAA survey, regular unleaded gasoline hit $3.386 a gallon, and diesel reached $4.119.

In other Nymex trading, heating oil futures rose slightly to $3.2029 a gallon while gasoline prices rose more than a penny to $2.8218 a gallon. Natural gas futures gained more than 15 cents to $10.053 per 1,000 cubic feet.