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DJ OIL FUTURES: Nymex Crude Steady After Rally On Iran(Comtex Business Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)NEW YORK, Mar 30, 2006 (Dow Jones Commodities News via Comtex) --By Masood Farivar OF DOW JONES NEWSWIRES Oil prices were flipping in and out of positive territory Thursday morning after rallying overnight on news of a planned Iranian naval exercise. Iran will launch a week of military exercises called 'Holy Prophet' by firing a Shahab II missile, an Islamic Republic News Agency report said Wednesday. The commander of the Islamic Republic Guard Corps Naval Force, Admiral Morteza Saffari, said the display would demonstrate "the country's full readiness to defend the territorial integrity of the motherland," according to the report. The announcement came after the U.N. Security Council voted unanimously to demand that Iran suspend nuclear enrichment. The planned Iranian show of military muscle is "bullish but was expected (in light of the Security Council vote) and may already be in prices," said Tom Bentz, an analyst at BNP Paribas Futures. "Markets have had a big run in the last few days. They may be overbought." The May crude contract on the New York Mercantile Exchange was flat at $66.45 a barrel after surging to a new two-month of $66.74 in electronic trading on news of the Iranian war games. May Brent on London's ICE Futures was up 53 cents at $66.10 a barrel. April gasoline rose 83 points to $1.9625 a gallon. April heating oil was up 55 points at $1.8575 a gallon. Chris McCormack, a broker and analyst at ABN Amro in New York, said the sharp run-up in oil prices this week may have left the market overbought despite lingering concerns about supplies in Iran and elsewhere. "Although the news is bullish and scary the market has already made a significant move up so a good pullback in here would not be surprising," he said. Meanwhile, the federal Energy Information Administration reported a surprisingly large weekly draw of 104 billion cubic feet in underground natural gas storage. Even so, the draw failed to generate much buying interest in natural gas futures. -By Masood Farivar; Dow Jones Newswires; 201-938-2094; [email protected] (END) Dow Jones Newswires 03-30-06 1052ET |