Domestic oil basket at $58.60

The price of India's crude oil basket rose 94 cents a barrel Tuesday to $58.60 in line with overseas trends, the petroleum and natural gas ministry said today.

The Indian crude basket comprises Oman-Dubai sour grade crude and Brent dated sweet crude in 58:42 ratio.

Tuesday, Brent crude closed at $59.23 a barrel, up 80 cents, while Dubai and Oman benchmarks were at $57.70, up 99 cents, and $58.65 a barrel, up 97 cents, respectively.

However, crude oil for November delivery on the NYMEX fell $1.01 a barrel to $58.93 Tuesday anticipating huge US inventory build up. The US weekly petroleum inventory data would be released later today.

In October till Tuesday, the basket averaged $57.43 a barrel compared with September's $61.04 and August's $70.84. The softening of crude prices last month provided some relief to India's oil marketing companies that had been reeling under heavy revenue losses.

The state-owned oil marketing companies have not revised retail product prices since June.