West Texas Intermediate crude narrowed its discount to Brent to the least in more than two months after a pipeline carrying oil out of Cushing, Oklahoma, the delivery point for U.S. futures, began making shipments.

The spread between WTI and Brent shrank to $9.49, the smallest gap since Nov. 8. The southern leg of the Keystone XL pipeline is initially transporting 288,000 barrels of light, sweet crude a day from the hub to Nederland, Texas. WTI has also been supported as frigid weather in much of the U.S. bolsters demand for heating fuel.

WTI for March delivery fell 36 cents, or 0.4 percent, to $96.96 a barrel at 10:26 a.m. on the New York Mercantile Exchange. It settled at $97.32 yesterday, the highest close this year. The volume of all contracts traded was 2.8 percent below the 100-day average. Prices are up 2.7 percent this week.

Brent for March settlement fell 79 cents, or 0.7 percent, to $106.79 a barrel on the ICE exchange. Volume was 9.5 percent above the 100-day average. The grade has advanced 0.3 percent this week. Brent’s premium to WTI was at $9.83 a barrel.

Gold prices are close to the maximum of seven weeks of growth and complete the fifth week in a row due to the downturn in the stock markets .

After a 28 percent decline in 2013, gold was the new year thanks to the growth slowdown in the stock markets due to the weak economic performance of China and mixed quarterly reports of American companies . However, evaluation research firm Thomson Reuters GFMS, this year prices will fall another 13 percent due to improvement of the world economy.

Experts note that the U.S. stock markets unusually weak in January that revives interest in precious metals .

Stocks of the world's largest exchange-traded fund backed by gold (ETF) SPDR Gold Trust fell on Thursday by 5.39 tons to 790.46 tons , which is close to the five-year minimum. The >

Gold $1,262.70 +0.40 +0.03%

Oil $97.35 +0.03 +0.03%