Petroleum Futures Decline

With OPEC failing to limit production, petroleum futures prices collapsed Monday, sending some heating oil and gasoline contracts plunging the limit allowed for daily trading.

Leaded gasoline slumped below 40 cents a gallon and crude oil settled below $13 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Some analysts see crude falling into the $10 to $12 range during the coming weeks.

The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries ended its six-day meeting Monday, unable to agree to production allotments for the member nations.

Without individual production cuts, OPEC’s stated target of a 1986 average output of 17.6 million barrels daily is meaningless, said analyst Peter Beutel, with Rudolf Wolff Energy Futures Inc. in New York. OPEC’s current production is an estimated 19 million barrels a day.

With Algeria, Lybia, Iran and Gabon taking a hard line against cutting their production, “it seems likely that prices will work themselves lower before the seasonal demand for heating oil turns them around,” said Nauman Barakat, an analyst in New York with Smith Barney, Harris Upham & Co.