Oil price surges briefly

Photo: Contributed

Oil future contracts are trading at their highest prices in nearly four months, briefly lending support to the Canadian dollar.

The loonie gained as much as two-thirds of a U.S. cent late this morning, before giving up some of the gains.

The petro-sensitive currency was at 76.45 cents US later in the morning, up 0.22 of a U.S. cent from Tuesday's close.

Heavily traded December contracts for crude traded as high as US$52.22 per barrel, their highest since late June. They later gave up some gains to trade at $51.97 per barrel, up $1.35 from the previous close. November contracts were at $51.71, up $1.42, but on less volume.

At the Toronto Stock Exchange, the S&P/TSX composite index was up a moderate 76.13 points or about half a percentage point at 14,828.38 — just short of a 52-week high.

The Dow Jones Industrial average was up 59.68 points at 18,221.62, the S&P 500 index was up 5.16 points at 2,144.76 and the Nasdaq composite was up 0.81 at 5,244.64.

December gold contracts were also up, rising US$10.60 to $1,271.40 an ounce, while December copper contracts were little-changed at US$2.10 a pound. November natural gas contracts were down 10 cents at US$3.16 per mmBTU.