NEW YORK-Crude oil prices wa­vered yes­ter­day but fin­ished high­er in a late trad­ing re­ver­sal as Eu­ro­pean lead­ers pre­pared to dis­cuss a slate of pro­pos­als to sta­bilise the re­gion's econ­o­my. Bench­mark US crude added 15 cents to end the day at $79.36 per bar­rel on the New York Mer­can­tile Ex­change.

Brent crude added US$2.01 to end at US$93.02 per bar­rel in Lon­don. Brent jumped af­ter Nor­way an­nounced that crude pro­duc­tion will de­cline in the North Sea af­ter about 700 oil work­ers went on strike. Brent crude comes from the North Sea. The eu­ro­zone econ­o­my has strug­gled for years to over­come a col­lapse in prop­er­ty val­ues caused by the re­ces­sion and huge gov­ern­ment debts. Now, a fail­ure by Eu­rope's lead­ers to fi­nal­ly find a so­lu­tion would like­ly push the eu­ro­zone econ­o­my back in­to re­ces­sion and cut en­er­gy de­mand in a re­gion that con­sumes 16 per cent of the world's oil.

Prices have wa­vered be­tween small gains and loss­es in yes­ter­day's ses­sion. They turned down in morn­ing trad­ing af­ter a re­port show­ing that con­sumer con­fi­dence in the US fell in June for the fourth straight month over lin­ger­ing wor­ries about the econ­o­my

The sit­u­a­tion in Eu­rope, com­bined with a slow­down in US hir­ing and a drop in Chi­nese man­u­fac­tur­ing ac­tiv­i­ty, has con­tributed to the sharp drop in oil prices since the win­ter. Bench­mark US crude hit a high of US$110.55 per bar­rel, while Brent topped out at US$128.40, both on March 1.

AP