Oil prices hit record high
Associated Press (via Yahoo News):
Light sweet crude for July delivery climbed 90 cents to settle at $59.37 a barrel, a record close on the New York Mercantile Exchange, where oil futures have been traded since 1983.[...]
Another development brokers were watching on Monday was the threat of a strike by oil workers in Norway, the world's third-largest exporter. A strike could begin as soon as Wednesday because of a salary dispute, potentially slicing the country's daily output of 3 million barrels by a third.
"If you take off 1 million barrels a day in this market, it's going to get ugly," said oil broker Tom Bentz of BNP Paribas Commodity Futures in New York. "Let's just hope it doesn't happen."
While Nymex oil futures are more than 56 percent higher than a year ago, they are still below the inflation-adjusted high above $90 a barrel set in 1980.