Oil futures rose Friday after the Labor Department said employers cut payrolls by 80,000 jobs last month, much more than analysts had expected, according to The Associated Press. The news that the U.S. unemployment rate rose to 5.1 percent sent the dollar lower and pushed light, sweet crude for May delivery up $2.40 to settle at $106.23 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Gasoline futures for May delivery rose 3.24 cents to settle at $2.7567 a gallon. Gasoline futures were also boosted Friday by a fire that shut down part of a Los Angeles refinery. The jobs report was consistent with forecasts that the U.S. is experiencing a sharp pullback in economic growth in the first half of the year. While oil demand in the world's largest energy consumer has slowed correspondingly, oil prices have not. Many analysts believe that's partly because weak economic data has hastened the decline of the dollar, whose weakness sustains the purchasing power of oil consumers using other currencies, and prods oil exporters to adjust prices upward for the dollar-denominated commodity. Retail gasoline prices, meanwhile, surged to a new U.S. record above $3.30 a gallon (87 cents a liter) Friday and appear poised to rise further in coming weeks as gasoline supplies tighten. While oil's surge above $100 over the last month has boosted gas prices so far this year, analysts now expect gas prices in the United States to continue rising regardless of what direction crude takes. That's because gasoline supplies are falling, in part because producers are cutting back on production of the fuel due to the high cost of crude: the more expensive crude is, the more refiners have to pay and the lower their profits are. They are also in the process of switching over from producing winter grades of gasoline to the less polluting but more expensive grade of fuel they are required to sell in the summer. «That cuts back on some of the supply and helps to pump up the price,» said Mike Pina, a spokesman for AAA.
