Oil tops $80/barrel, heads toward $100, as dollar falls

Oil prices topped $80 a barrel for the first time in a year, as refiners shifted production to winter fuel oil and the dollar fell in value, reports Bloomberg News here. "Crude oil is poised to top $100 a barrel... according to technical analysis by Auerbach Grayson, a brokerage in New York."

Oil rose after the Energy Department reported drivers and other users are burning gasoline faster than refiners are making more. U.S. refiners like Philadelphia-based Sunoco have announced production cuts (including the closure of Sunoco's Eagle Point NJ refinery) as profits decline, because foreign oil costs are rising faster than they can boost prices.

You need more than $1.50 to buy one euro today, the most in more than a year; the dollar's also down vs. other currencies; which means imported everything is getting more expensive.

My Haddon Township correspondent, Buzz Griffin, reports gasoline prices rose 16 cents a gallon at his neighborhood pumps just last week. Jersey's cheap - low tax - still below $2.40 - but gas is up to $2.70 a gallon, he adds, in the Poconos. Griffin recommends Garden State gas guzzlers to this handy site.