After spending much of the last two months see-sawing, futures prices on the New York Mercantile Exchange climbed to a two-month high of over US$67.00 a barrel during the week ending 31 March 2006, coming closer to the late January high of US$69.20 a barrel and the all-time peak of US$70.85 a barrel touched in last August after Hurricane Katrina slammed into the U.S. Gulf Coast. During the week, the WTI spot FOB averaged US$65.93 per barrel while European Brent spot averaged US$66.04 a barrel. The OPEC basket averaged US$59.88 a barrel.