NEW YORK-The price of oil rose yes­ter­day with in­vestors fo­cus­ing on up­beat news about the US econ­o­my. Bench­mark crude rose 32 cents to end the day at US$92.51 per bar­rel in New York, while Brent crude lost 20 cents to fin­ish at US$109.34 a bar­rel in Lon­don. Prices head­ed high­er fol­low­ing a re­port that said the pri­vate sec­tor added 111,000 jobs in Oc­to­ber. The Au­to­mat­ic Da­ta Pro­cess­ing re­port said most of those gains were in the ser­vices in­dus­try. Oil slipped from its af­ter­noon high, how­ev­er, af­ter the Fed­er­al Re­serve end­ed a two-day meet­ing with no new pol­i­cy an­nounce­ments.

The Fed can have a big in­flu­ence on oil prices. Its de­ci­sion last year to pump US$600 bil­lion in­to a bond-buy­ing pro­gramme sent rip­ples through cur­ren­cy and com­mod­i­ty mar­kets that ef­fec­tive­ly propped up the price of oil. Bench­mark crude climbed 20 per cent high­er in 2010 from Au­gust to No­vem­ber. Fed of­fi­cials said yes­ter­day that the US econ­o­my but the cen­tral bank said it could take more steps lat­er, if the econ­o­my stays slug­gish.