NEW YORK (July 7) - Oil prices fell for the fifth straight day Tuesday and a barrel costs $10 less than it did just one week ago, when crude hit a new high for the year.
Benchmark crude for August delivery fell $1.21 to $62.84 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
Oil prices had already begun to slide after peaking last Tuesday and dismal jobs numbers to end the week from both the U.S. and Europe have accelerated the fall.
The unemployment data dampened optimism about a quick economic recovery, and raised new doubts about the global appetite for energy.
For months a weak dollar has brought more investment money into the market even though storage levels for everything from crude to gasoline are very high.
Stockpiles of gasoline have increased steadily for the past four weeks even though the country is in the midst of the heavy driving season, which includes the July Fourth holiday weekend. That trend is expected to continue Wednesday, when the Department of Energy releases storage levels for the past week.
Americans are driving billions fewer miles this year and the price for retail gasoline, after rising steadily for two months, has finally begun to fall.
The price at the pump fell again overnight to a new national average of $2.604 a gallon, according to the Oil Price Information Service and AAA. That's about a penny less than gas cost last month at this time and much cheaper than last year, when gasoline cost around $4.10 per gallon.
The Energy Department will publish its short-term demand outlook later on Tuesday.
Last month, the department projected that consumption of liquid petroleum products would contract by about 3 percent this year.
Still, oil prices have doubled since the beginning of the year and on Tuesday, federal regulators said they would examine whether the government should impose limits on the number of futures contracts in oil and other energy commodities held by speculative traders.
In other Nymex trading, gasoline for August delivery fell 1.24 cents to $1.728 a gallon and heating oil dropped 2.4 cents to $1.603. Natural gas for August delivery rose a penny to $3.497 per 1,000 cubic feet.
In London, Brent prices shed 95 cents to $63.10 a barrel on the ICE Futures exchange.
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Associated Press writers Alex Kennedy and George Jahn in Vienna contributed to this report from Singapore.
