Oil Hits $100 a Barrel

Oil prices, after taking an initial dip on a weekly government report on inventory levels, crossed the $100 threshold Thursday and continued a six-year, five-fold spike driven by surging demand and limited supply.

U.S. light crude for February delivery crossed $100 a barrel around 11:30 ET on the New York Mercantile Exchange and hit a new all-time trading high of $100.09 later in the session before slipping to settle at $99.18 a barrel, down 44 cents.

On Wednesday, oil briefly touched $100 for the first time - although that amount was paid by one trader who bought one contract - before settling at the end of the day at a record $99.62....

The inventory report is just the latest mover in a market that is hyper-sensitive to news. Oil prices have surged five-fold in the last six years, going from under $20 a barrel in early 2002. In 2007 alone, crude jumped nearly 60 percent...

Adjusted for inflation, oil is at or near the prices of the early 1980s. At that time, following the Iranian revolution and the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq war, oil traded in the high $30-a-barrel range, the equivalent of between $92 and around $103 a barrel in current prices, depending on the contract cited and the inflation calculation used.

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