TN PETRÓLEO

Oil prices were down slightly Friday after reaching a nine-month high overnight on worries that the U.S. refining industry can`t meet peak summer gasoline demand.

At midday in Europe, light, sweet crude for July delivery was down 26 cents at $67.39 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

The contract rose $1.39 to settle at $67.65 a barrel Thursday, the first time since September that Nymex crude closed above $67 a barrel.

Brent crude for August delivery fell 49 cents to $70.87 a barrel on the ICE Futures exchange in London.

The U.S. Energy Department reported Wednesday that refinery utilization fell last week, and that gasoline inventories did not grow.

"The thing about those numbers is everybody knew that they (were) going to be struggling to keep up with gasoline demand as it was ... but they didn`t seem to make any progress refining-wise," said Tobin Gorey, a commodity strategist with the Commonwealth Bank of Australia in Sydney.

Refinery utilization, which had been expected to grow by 0.8 percent, fell 0.4 percent to 89.2 percent, the second straight weekly decline, according to the Energy Information Administration. Most analysts say refineries should be using 94 percent to 95 percent of their capacity at this time of year.

"They`re having trouble keeping (refinery) capacity use up ... it should be high and rising," Gorey said.

Gasoline inventories were unchanged at 201.5 million barrels for the week ended June 8, the EIA report said. Analysts surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires expected inventories to rise by 2 million barrels.

Weather issues in the Gulf of Mexico also gained importance, as a recent forecast by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration called for above-normal hurricane activity in the Atlantic, with 13 to 17 named storms, including up to 10 hurricanes, of which up to five are seen becoming intense.

These have the potential to shut down production of more than 13.2 million barrels of crude oil and 86.5 billion cubic feet of natural gas, the U.S. Energy Information Administration predicted.

"The energy complex will be back to being a weather market trading around the forecasts of hurricanes," said Olivier Jakob at Petromatrix in Switzerland.

Also supporting prices were tensions between the West and Iran, which continues to assert it will never suspend uranium enrichment, and the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries` refusal to boost production.

Gorey said market participants are also concerned over whether OPEC will raise output levels later in the year to meet winter demand in the Northern Hemisphere.

In Nigeria, gunmen kidnapped four foreign workers Friday in the country`s lawless southern oil heartland.

On Thursday, a leader of the militant group behind attacks on Nigeria`s oil industry walked free from prison after a judge granted him bail, marking a breakthrough in the crisis roiling Africa`s oil giant and global petroleum markets.

Militant attacks have cut oil production by about a quarter in Nigeria, Africa`s top producer and a leading source of U.S. oil imports.

Heating oil futures were down 1.38 cent to $2.0023 a gallon (3.8 liters) while natural gas prices lost 1.8 cent to $7.790 per 1,000 cubic feet.