NEW YORK - Eu­rop's lat­est at­tempt to re­vive its econ­o­my drove the price of oil 2 per cent high­er yes­ter­day, re­vers­ing a sharp, two-day drop. Bench­mark US crude fin­ished at US$79.76 per bar­rel in New York. Crude is still down more than 5 per cent for the week, how­ev­er. Brent crude, which is used to price oil im­port­ed by many US re­finer­ies, climbed US$1.75 to end at US$90.98 a bar­rel in Lon­don.

Prices rose af­ter lead­ers of Ger­many, France, Italy and Spain said they would push for a US$163 bil­lion stim­u­lus pack­age. The 17-na­tion eu­ro­zone has been bur­dened for years by a moun­tain of debt, and Eu­ro­pean lead­ers have been look­ing for ways to en­cour­age growth. Even a small im­prove­ment in Eu­rope's flag­ging econ­o­my could boost en­er­gy de­mand and in­crease oil con­sump­tion.

Mean­while, traders kept an eye on a gath­er­ing storm in the Gulf of Mex­i­co that could in­ter­rupt oil sup­plies. The Na­tion­al Hur­ri­cane Cen­ter said a sys­tem off the Yu­catan Penin­su­la and west­ern Cu­ba could strength­en in­to a trop­i­cal storm over the week­end, pos­si­bly dis­rupt­ing pro­duc­tion plat­forms in the Gulf.

Roy­al Dutch Shell said yes­ter­day the storm may force it to sus­pend some op­er­a­tions and evac­u­ate some work­ers in the Gulf, but so far it doesn't ex­pect the storm to im­pact pro­duc­tion from its wells. "Even if the storm doesn't do any ma­jor dam­age, it could still slow down im­ports," com­ing in on ships, said Phil Fly­nn, an an­a­lyst with Price Group.

Oil prices tum­bled ear­li­er this week on signs of a weak­en­ing econ­o­my. If busi­ness­es and peo­ple use less en­er­gy, de­mand for oil falls. Ris­ing sup­plies are al­so weigh­ing on prices. US sup­plies are at their high­est lev­el in 22 years, thanks to a pro­duc­tion boom in North Amer­i­ca. As the price of oil fell this week, it pulled down the price of US gaso­line and oth­er pe­tro­le­um-based fu­els.

Pump prices fell by 7 cents this week to a na­tion­al av­er­age of US$3.45 a gal­lon (91 cents a litre), ac­cord­ing to AAA, Wright Ex­press and Oil Price In­for­ma­tion Ser­vice. The cost of reg­u­lar is down 48 cents per gal­lon from an April peak. Dri­vers paid about 14 cents less for a gal­lon of gaso­line than they did in the same week last year. The drop, com­bined with falling con­sump­tion this year, means Amer­i­can dri­vers are spend­ing rough­ly US$124 mil­lion less per day for gas.

In oth­er en­er­gy fu­tures trad­ing, heat­ing oil rose near­ly a pen­ny to fin­ish at US$2.5337 per gal­lon, while whole­sale gaso­line al­most 2 cents to end at US$2.5699 per gal­lon. Nat­ur­al gas rose by 4.3 cents to end the week at US$2.6250 per 1,000 cu­bic feet. Prices for wheat and corn set­tled high­er yes­ter­day as week­end fore­casts call for more hot weath­er.

Wheat for Ju­ly de­liv­ery rose 11.5 cents to set­tle at US$6.7325 a bushel. That's a gain of 1.7 per cent. Wheat is up 10.5 per cent for the week. Corn al­so rose. The ac­tive­ly trad­ed De­cem­ber con­tract rose 4 cents to set­tle at US$5.54 a bushel. Soy­beans for No­vem­ber de­liv­ery rose 4.25 cents to US$13.755 a bushel.

Hot weath­er has been wilt­ing crops this sum­mer, and more is ex­pect­ed to be on the way this week­end, said Spencer Pat­ton, the founder and chief in­vest­ment of­fi­cer of Steel Vine In­vest­ments, a Chica­go-based hedge fund. "Every­thing is de­pen­dent on pre­cip­i­ta­tion for corn," Pat­ton said, "and what we're see­ing is more heat than pre­cip­i­ta­tion."

Met­als prices were mixed. Gold for Au­gust de­liv­ery fell US$1.40 to US$1,566.90 per ounce. Ju­ly sil­ver lost 17.8 cents to US$26.661 an ounce. Ju­ly cop­per rose 0.8 cent to US$3.3060 per pound. Sep­tem­ber pal­la­di­um fell $1.35 to $607.20 per ounce. Ju­ly plat­inum fell $7.40 to $1,431.20 per ounce.

AP