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October 18, 2000 11:00 AM, EDT

Petroleum futures prices soared late last week as escalating violence in the Middle East evaporated the budding optimism that world fuel prices were headed downward.

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The rapidly rising futures prices came, ironically, as retail fuel prices were falling. The average price of diesel fuel dropped to $1.614 last week, according to the Energy Information Agency. The average was 1.1 cents per gallon below the previous week and 4.3 cents below the all-time high of $1.657, reached Sept. 25.

But the expanding hostilities in the Middle East, including a terrorist attack on a U.S. Navy warship that left at least five U.S. servicemen dead and 30 injured, cast a shadow over all fuel-related events and sent oil prices on Oct. 12 as high as $37 on the New York Mercantile Exchange — up from the $30.33 reached on Oct. 10. However, NYMEX prices subsided to about $35 a barrel later in the day.

In another disturbing development, distillate stocks as reported by the American Petroleum Institute dropped last week, triggering renewed concern about prices of both heating oil and diesel fuel as cold weather nears in the Northeast.

For the full story, see the Oct. 16 print edition of Transport Topics. .