Energy Sector Roundup: Oil Approaches $144

Crude Falls Back from New Record

Oil prices surged past $143 a barrel for the first time and then fell back as a rising dollar prompted some investors to sell.

Crude gave back its gains after the Chicago Purchasing Managers' Index of Midwest Manufacturing beat estimates and the dollar strengthened against the euro.

Light, sweet crude for August delivery fell 21 cents to settle at $140 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. In early electronic trading, the contract hit a record $143.67.

In other Nymex trading, heating oil futures fell 0.37 cent to settle at $3.9029 a gallon, while gasoline contracts were virtually unchanged at $3.5015 a gallon. Natural gas futures rose 15.5 cents to $13.353 per 1,000 cubic feet.

Petroleum Leaders Urge Unity on Rising Energy Prices

As oil set a new record, top industry executives and a senior European government official urged the world to pull together in the face of skyrocketing energy prices, while acknowledging that costly crude is here to stay for years.

The comments to the World Petroleum Congress In Madrid, Spain, by the EU Energy Commissioner and the heads of Royal Dutch Shell PLC, BP PLC and Spain's Repsol reflected a key theme of the four-day meeting--how to bring order into volatile and ever pricier oil and related energy markets.

BP CEO Tony Hayward warned against hopes that present high prices are a bubble that will burst the same way that they did in the 1970s, saying the supply-and-demand picture had changed since them.