Petroleum Futures Rise

Petroleum futures prices moved higher Monday, with the market enlivened by reports of tight supplies of gasoline in some parts of the country.

OPEC wrapped up its meeting in Geneva with an agreement by 10 of the 13 nations to put a lid on production, but lacking any quotas for individual nations.

Some analysts dismissed the agreement as meaningless and said it had no effect on futures trading at the New York Mercantile Exchange.

“The whole market was driven by tight (gasoline) supplies in the central part of the nation and on the West Coast,” said Ed Dellamonte, an analyst in New York with Prudential-Bache Securities. “An agreement without quotas is like having no agreement at all.”

He said there has been talk about some terminals in the Midwest being out of gasoline, but that higher prices on the West Coast has been attracting gasoline out of the East.

Another analyst, Richard Marose of Geldermann Inc. in Chicago, said there are lower-than-average supplies at various spots all across the nation.