Nose-Diving Price of Oil Futures Leaves ‘Blood on the Floor’

NEW YORK — The price of heating oil futures plummeted today in volatile trading on a wave of profit-taking after a huge refinery fire and bitter cold weather sent prices skyrocketing earlier in the week.

“People who bought (heating oil) at the tops are dead,” said one trader. “There’s a lot of blood on the floor.”

At the opening on the New York Mercantile Exchange, heating oil for delivery in January jumped 2.29 cents to a high of $1.02 a gallon--the highest price since January, 1984--before nose-diving in a frenzied late-morning sell-off, to a low of 88 cents a gallon.

Prices had recovered somewhat by midday, and the price of the January heating-oil contract was 94.50 cents a gallon.

“It’s obviously profit-taking, and lots of it,” one heating oil trader said of the price drop.