NEW YORK (AP) -- Oil closed above $69 a barrel, a nine-month high, and gasoline futures also rose Monday after Nigerian oil unions called a strike for this week.
Retail gas prices, meanwhile, continued their decline despite analyst predictions Friday that they would fall no further.Nigerian oil unions called a general nationwide strike to begin Wednesday in protest of a government price hike on automobile fuel. Also supporting energy prices were attacks on two Nigerian oil facilities by angry villagers and gunmen, which cut oil output.
"You've got kind of a double-whammy out of Nigeria," said Kevin Saville, managing editor for the Americas energy desk at Platts, the energy research arm of the McGraw-Hill Cos.
Nigeria was the third-biggest exporter of oil to the U.S. in March, behind Canada and Mexico, with an average of 1.35 million barrels a day, according to Energy Department statistics.
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