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by Stockwatch Business Reporter

West Texas Intermediate crude for March delivery added 75 cents to $73.92 on the New York Merc, while Brent for March added 55 cents to $77.63 (all figures in this para U.S.). Western Canadian Select traded at a discount of $13.10 to WTI, down from a discount of $10.90. Natural gas for February lost 38 cents to $3.31. The TSX energy index lost 2.75 points to close at 269.62.

Oil prices perked up slightly on renewed geopolitical tensions in Libya, where protesters blocked crude oil loadings at two major ports, threatening to disrupt around 450,000 barrels a day of exports. For context, Libya produces about 1.4 million barrels a day -- and there have been almost as many outages in the past decade. Most recently, a dispute over central bank governance in August forced the shutdown of around 700,000 barrels a day until October. Today, at least, exports were not held hostage for quite so long. Within hours of the initial reports, Libya's state-run National Oil Corp. said it held talks with the protesters and got the ports back to normal.

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