Crude oil prices rose $1 to $96.34 a barrel in European trading on Thursday, according to MarketWatch.

European investors attribute the rise to an anticipated European Central Bank plan to launch a bond-market intervention.



Analysts hope that the ECB plan will alleviate the economic hardships that have hammered Spain and Italy. Bloomberg reported that the plan will likely include sterilized bond purchases with no public cap on yields.

Investors also attribute the rise in oil prices to the weak U.S. dollar. The ICE dollar index DXY, which calculates the value of the dollar against six rival currencies, fell to 81.18 from 81.253 in North American trading yesterday.

Meanwhile, gasoline prices rose to $2.98 a gallon for October deliveries, while heating oil jumped 0.8 percent to $3.14 a gallon. Natural gas, however, did drop 0.3 percent to $2.79 per million British thermal units.