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Summary Oil prices hit $100 per barrel for the first time in nearly four months as US supplies dropped.
Prices have soared 26 percent since the end of September as the US economy improves and tensions rise in countries that hold some of the worlds major sources of crude.The price of US benchmark crude crossed the $100 mark early Wednesday, rising $2.85 to $102.22 per barrel in New York.They jumped by another 2.6 percent after a Canadian pipeline company announced it would ship crude away from a key delivery point in the Midwest.The delivery point in Cushing, Oklahoma, has been historically oversupplied with little access to international oil markets. That appeared to change Wednesday when Enbridge Products Partners L.P. announced it bought a 50 percent stake in the Seaway pipeline from ConocoPhillips for $1.15 billion. The company plans to use it to transport oil from Cushing to refineries along the Gulf Coast, where much of it will be shipped overseas because of rising demand from Latin America.Enbridge expects to bring 150,000 barrels per day to the Gulfs refineries by the second quarter of 2012. Its expected to be expanded to 400,000 barrels per day by early 2013.Fears of another US recession had knocked oil prices from their 2011 peak at $113.93, set on April 29. But a variety of factors have pushed prices back up.
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