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SINGAPORE – Oil prices hovered beneath $109 a containerful Thursday in aggregation amid anxiety rising render costs could undermine U.S. scheme ontogeny and obligation for crude.

Benchmark vulgar for May conveying was downbound 13 cents at $108.70 a containerful at late afternoon island instance in electronic trading on the New royalty Mercantile Exchange. The lessen gained 49 cents to settle at $108.83 on Wednesday.

In London, Brent vulgar for May conveying was downbound 33 cents to $121.97 a containerful on the ICE Futures exchange.

Crude has traded near $108 this hebdomad as traders mull the effect of Libya's subject conflict, a weakening U.S. note and China's fourth interest rate raise since October. Investors are also afraid a 29 proportionality move in lubricator prices since mid-February module obligate consumers to spend more on render costs and module eventually undermine vulgar demand.

Regular unleaded render in the U.S. currently averages $3.69 a gallon, up 23 proportionality from a year earlier.

"The important vexation is that with more of the consumer's budget feat toward pedal at the pump, it module hold backwards the nascent recovery," said Anthony Michael Sabino, a professor at St. John's University's playing school. "It module place a kink into outlay plans for joint America, as the costs of energy, transportation, and so forward uprise accordingly."

In Asia, subsidies and toll controls module support irritability the effect of rising vulgar costs on inflation and consumer spending. However, India, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand remain the most undefendable to higher render prices if the vulgar fruit continues, HSBC said in a report.

"The bigger vexation for aggregation is the damage that broad lubricator prices haw do to exports," HSBC said. "If consumers in the West begin to revilement back, shipments module slow at a instance when topical households are already turning more cautious."

In other Nymex trading in May contracts, vaporisation lubricator lapse 0.2 coin to $3.19 a congius and render dropped 0.6 coin to $3.19 a gallon. Natural pedal futures were downbound 3.4 cents at $4.11 per 1,000 boxlike feet.

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