World Oil Drops Below $53 a Barrel; US Gas Hits New High

VOA News
April 11, 2005

World oil prices continued declining Monday as members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries said they would consider raising oil output quotas to continue easing prices.

Crude oil for May delivery dropped as low as $52.10 a barrel in New York trading on Monday.

That is down sharply from a week ago when crude oil futures hit a record high price of $58.28 a barrel.

The decline follows last week's U.S. government report showing an increasing supply of crude oil in the U.S. market, and growing refinery operations to turn out gasoline.

Meantime, U.S. retail gasoline prices hit a record high average of $2.29 a gallon or about 60 cents a liter. The lingering high prices are thought to reflect the time it takes to refine crude oil into gasoline.

Some information for this report provided by Bloomberg, AFP and AP.