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WASHINGTON (AP) - Oil prices settled above $61 a barrel Friday to finish 2006 roughly where they began, marking another tough year for energy consumers and another stellar one for the petroleum industry. It was the fifth straight year in which oil prices were higher than the year before, on average.
Many analysts are looking for crude-oil futures next year to average more than $60 a barrel because of robust demand growth in Asia and the Middle East, efforts by OPEC to trim supply and market-rattling instability in energy-rich countries such as Nigeria and Iraq.
But slower economic growth in the U.S. and a production spurt from non-OPEC countries should keep prices below the 2006 average of roughly $66 a barrel, analysts said. And with expectations of fewer refining bottlenecks, gasoline and other fuels should be less expensive — though not cheap when compared with costs from just a few years ago.
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