Bobert

Technical aids to determine the future price of oil is a little more difficult due to the expiration of contracts. Since technical analysis requires data points to process (for example, a 20-day moving average has no value until the 21st day of trading....) and time in the futures market is never on your side, charts really don't take on any meaningful information until say 3-6 months before expiration.

Some data providers may use continous contracts, nice chart look and feel, but a thorough understanding is needed on how the data provider bridges overlapping data points on different contract expirations.

I go to this site below (I included the address in the picture at the top) to quickly see how current and future contracts are behaving. The site is free and is a good reference for most US future markets. I then look at say the MAY 09 contract and look at that chart to see if any technical indicators provide support or resistance.

Hope this helps,

Booster