Stronger dollar sends oil prices lower

Crude oil prices were lower in afternoon trade on a stronger dollar after going higher earlier on reports of attacks on pipelines in Nigeria and Iraq.

Nigerian rebels were said to have attacked a pipeline in the southern part of that African nation on Saturday as a protest against what they called lack of progress in talks with the government, while on the same day a pipeline was sabotaged in Iraq, possibly as Iranian troops withdrew from their occupation of a well in Iraq.

At just before the close of floor trade, January contracts for West Texas Intermediate crude were down 95 cents to $72.41 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

With January contracts due to expire at the end of the trading day, February contracts had dropped 76 cents to $73.66 per barrel.

Meanwhile, February Brent crude was down 89 cents to $72.86 per barrel on the ICE Futures Europe exchange in London.

Most analysts expect that the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries will leave production quotas unchanged in a meeting this week after the cartel’s president expressed satisfaction with the current price of oil.

In the United States, the retail price of gasoline remained steady overnight at $2.59 per gallon on average nationally, having dropped 1.3 cents in the past week.