Oil prices fall to lowest level in weeks - Yahoo! News
Benchmark West Texas Intermediate crude for April delivery dropped $3.40, about 3.4 percent, to $97.79 per barrel. Brent crude lost $4.29, almost 4 percent, to $109.38 per barrel on the ICE Futures exchange.
Prices are still well above what they were in the middle of February, when uprisings in Libya shut down that country's oil production. Wall Street analysts said they expected that Japan's crisis would eventually force it to boost imports of coal, natural gas and oil.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Dollar Index, which tracks the greenback versus other major currencies, rose nearly 1 percent. Investors were likely buying the dollar because of its relative safety as the Japanese disaster raises concerns about the future of the world's third-largest oil consumer and the nuclear energy industry in general, said Tom Kloza, publisher and chief oil analyst at Oil Price Information Service.
Benchmark West Texas Intermediate crude for April delivery dropped $3.40, about 3.4 percent, to $97.79 per barrel. Brent crude lost $4.29, almost 4 percent, to $109.38 per barrel on the ICE Futures exchange.
Prices are still well above what they were in the middle of February, when uprisings in Libya shut down that country's oil production. Wall Street analysts said they expected that Japan's crisis would eventually force it to boost imports of coal, natural gas and oil.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Dollar Index, which tracks the greenback versus other major currencies, rose nearly 1 percent. Investors were likely buying the dollar because of its relative safety as the Japanese disaster raises concerns about the future of the world's third-largest oil consumer and the nuclear energy industry in general, said Tom Kloza, publisher and chief oil analyst at Oil Price Information Service.
