The Senate voted to temporarily halt the shipment of thousands of barrels of oil a day into the government’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
Both Democrats and Republicans said the shipments make no sense when oil costs over $120 a barrel and could better be used to add supplies to a tight market and help keep prices down.
“We [...]

PetroChina Ltd. said first-quarter profit plunged 31.5 percent in large part because of government controls that bar it from passing on record crude-oil costs to consumers.
China’s biggest oil company said profit was 28.8 billion yuan ($4.1 billion) for the three months ending March 31. PetroChina is the publicly traded arm of government-owned China National Petroleum [...]

China Petroleum & Chemical Corp., Asia’s biggest oil refiner, said first-half profit may rise more than 50 percent on increased sales of fuels and chemicals.
The forecast from Sinopec, as the Beijing-based company is known, came as it said first-quarter profit more than doubled from a year earlier. Net income climbed to 19.4 billion yuan ($2.5 [...]

Gold in New York fell for the third straight session as lower energy costs reduced the appeal of the precious metal as a hedge against inflation.
Gold and oil have moved mostly in lockstep this year. Oil touched a two-week low after BP Plc said it will keep half of the production flowing at Alaska’s Prudhoe [...]