North American stocks look set to open lower Thursday as crude oil prices rose and quarterly earnings reports flooded in.

Light sweet crude for December delivery rose 33¢ to US$60.99 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange in early morning trading.

In today’s earnings news, Petro-Canada said its third-quarter profit soared to $614 million from a year-earlier $410 million.

Royal Dutch Shell PLC reported a 67% increase in third-quarter profit Thursday to US$9.39 billion, as soaring oil prices outweighed lost production and damage to rigs from fierce hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico.

Exxon Mobil’s profit surged 75% and revenue topped US$100 billion in the third quarter amid high oil and gas prices.

Last evening, Placer Dome Inc. reported that its third-quarter earnings had fallen to US$34 million from US$148 million a year ago. The company also announced it has reached a deal to sell its stake in a Chilean joint venture to its partners, Bema Gold Corp. and Arizona Star Resource Corp., putting to rest a bitter dispute between the companies.

In today’s economic news, Canadian manufacturers were slightly more bullish about production prospects for the last quarter of 2005, Statistics Canada reported.

The Business Conditions Survey for Manufacturing Industries for October found increases in new orders, a higher backlog of unfilled orders and a decline in finished product inventories.

The Canadian dollar opened at US85.64¢, up 0.23 of a cent..

South of the border, the U.S. government reported that durable-goods orders fell 2.1%, more than the 1% economists had expected.

Initial-jobless claims fell by 28,000, more than the 15,000 expected.

In overseas trading, European indexes dropped in early action.

Overnight, Japanese stocks rose for a third day as buying in financial, real estate-linked stocks offset drops in technology issues. The Nikkei 225 index rose 22.06 points, or 0.16%, to finish at 13,417.08 points on the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng index fell 77.08 points, or 0.5%, to finish at 14,381.06.

Toronto stocks fell Wednesday, pulled lower by an energy sector weighed down by falling oil prices.

The S&P/TSX composite index finished down 80.08, or 0.77%, to 10,283.66.

EnCana Corp. reported third-quarter profit of $266 million from a year-ago $604 million. Its shares fell $5.00, or 8.20%, to $56.00.

Research in Motion lost an emergency U.S. Supreme Court appeal that sought to put a patent suit against the company by U.S.-based NTP Inc. on hold. Trading was halted prior to the announcement with share price falling to $51 from yesterday’s close of $57.40. After the announcement, shares rallied to finish up 92¢, or 1.60%, to $58.32 as investors viewed the decision as an insignificant setback.


The junior S&P/TSX Venture exchange finished down 13.30, or 0.66%, to 1,991.83.

In New York, markets lost ground on investors’ inflation concerns and on disappointing corporate earnings news.

The Dow Jones industrials average lost 32.89 points to 10,344.98, after an up-and-down session. The S&P 500 fell 5.16 points to 1,191.38 and the Nasdaq Composite retreated 9.40 points to 2,100.05.