Forexpros – Crude oil futures dropped Thursday on fears that no matter what happens with the European debt crisis, the economy will cool and demand less oil and derivatives to motor its output.
On the New York Mercantile Exchange, light, sweet crude futures for delivery in January traded at USD93.06 a barrel in mid-session trading, down 0.86%.
The commodity hit a session high of USD94.78 and a low of 92.53 so far on Friday.
OPEC countries earlier in the week agreed to hold output at 30 million barrels a day on sentiment a sluggish global economy can’t handle pricier crude.
Furthermore, currency-market sentiment that the euro was nicely priced for bottom-fishing sparked demand for the European monetary unit, thus pushing oil prices down further on Friday.
Meanwhile the dollar, which often trades inversely from oil, was down as well.
The dollar index, which tracks the performance of the greenback versus a basket of six other major currencies, was off 0.03% at 80.94 on Friday.
Elsewhere, on the ICE Futures Exchange, Brent oil futures for February delivery were down 0.65%, trading at USD102.92 a barrel, up USD9.86 from its U.S. counterpart.
The gap in price between the two contracts hovers between a nearly USD20.00 all-time high and a historical spread of USD1.00.
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