Crude Declines as U.S. Payrolls Numbers Miss Estimates

Oil fell a second day in New York after the U.S. added fewer jobs than forecast last month while a planned meeting between labor unions and oil companies in Norway signaled output disruptions may be averted.

West Texas Intermediate futures lost as much as 2.8 percent, erasing a weekly gain. Payrolls rose 80,000 last month after a 77,000 increase in May, Labor Department figures showed today in Washington. Economists projected a 100,000 gain, according to the median estimate in a Bloomberg News survey. Norway’s Ministry of Labor said it’s called labor unions representing striking workers and the country’s Oil Industry Association in for a meeting in Oslo at 6 p.m. local time today.

“The growth outlook has been bleak,” said Thina Saltvedt, an analyst at Nordea AB in Oslo, who correctly predicted the U.S. jobs data would be lower than forecast. “We expect to see some more soft data from the world’s largest oil consumer before we see a turnaround for the better later this summer.”

Oil for August delivery fell as much as $2.42 to $84.80 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange and was at $84.87 at 1:43 p.m. London time, down 0.1 percent for the week.

Brent oil for August settlement declined $2.57, or 2.6 percent, to $98.13 a barrel on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange. The European benchmark’s premium to West Texas Intermediate was at $13.63, compared with $13.48 yesterday.

To contact the reporter on this story: Grant Smith in London at gsmith52@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Stephen Voss on sev@bloomberg.net

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July 6 (Bloomberg) -- Alix Steel reports on today's top commodity headlines. She speaks on Bloomberg Television's "Lunch Money." (Source: Bloomberg)