Crude oil prices drop below $89 per barrel

Crude oil prices were lower on Friday to end a week in which West Texas Intermediate crude dropped by around $10 this week.

WTI January contracts were down $2.30 to $88.71 per barrel at the close of trade on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Several factors led to the day’s and week’s declines, including the expectation that the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries will increase production levels when it meets on 5 December in Abu Dhabi.

In addition, worries caused when four pipelines that carry crude oil from Canada to the United States closed down late Wednesday due to an explosion and fire were mostly alleviated when three of the four lines were reopened on Thursday and it was estimated that it would only take two or three days to reopen the fourth line.

The four lines together carry 1.5 million barrels per day of crude oil into the United States, about 15 percent of total US oil imports.

Prices also fell on worries that oil demand in the US could slow with economic growth as analysts predicted a sharp slowdown in growth in the fourth quarter after gains in the third quarter.

Nymex December contracts for gasoline, which closed at the end of trade on Friday, were down less than 1 cent to $2.26 per gallon while January natural gas dropped 15 cents to $7.302 per 1,000 cubic feet.

At-the-pump gasoline prices in the US dropped 0.8 cent overnight to a national average of $3.088 per gallon.