Oil rises for 4th day, touches $100 a barrel

The price of benchmark crude rose 86 cents to finish at $99.53 per barrel in New York. At one point in the session it hit $100.05. Brent crude, which is used to price crude produced in many foreign countries and is important for gasoline producers, rose 18 cents to end at $107.89 per barrel in London.A series of positive reports in the suggested that the economy is slowly improving. That has sent stock prices and oil prices higher this week.Investors got a double-barrel of encouraging news Thursday, as the Labor Department said unemployment claims last week dropped to the lowest level in more than three and a half years, and a private report said leading economic indicators pointed to a strengthening economy.On Tuesday, a report showed housing construction was picking up in the And on Wednesday, the Energy Information Administration reported a dramatic drop in the nations oil supplies last week.Gasoline demand was down 2.6 percent from last year through the first nine months of the year, according to government data. Drivers cut back amid high pump prices and worries about the economy.Demand for oil and gas grows with the economy as shippers move more goods and consumers drive and fly more.Oil prices are also being pushed higher by threats to global supplies. Rising tensions between the West and Iran over Irans nuclear ambitions are raising fears that oil from the worlds fourth biggest producer may be kept from reaching markets in the coming weeks.Oil traders also are concerned about political instability in Kazakhstan, which exports about 1.3 million barrels of oil per day, about 1.5 percent of world demand. The Central Asian nation has been battling political protests that have resulted in more than a dozen deaths in the last month.