Crude-oil futures fell Wednesday for a third session, briefly tumbling 6% to below $37 a barrel, on expectations that U.S. crude inventories have risen for a third week.
The Energy Information Administration will release last week's petroleum inventories data Wednesday morning. Analysts surveyed by energy information provider Platts expect a 1.5 million barrel buildup in crude stockpiles.
Crude for February delivery lost as much as $2.35, or 6%, to $36.63 a barrel in overnight electronic trading. It was last down $1.51, or 3.9%, at $37.41 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
More data were released Wednesday that indicated a weaker U.S. economy, the world's biggest oil consumer.
The U.S. labor market continued to worsen in recent weeks, with the unemployment lines stretching to the longest in 26 years, the Labor Department reported.
Orders for U.S.-made durable goods fell 1% in November, the Commerce Department estimated, as orders for transportation goods fell 7.4%.
Oil was falling "as a continuing barrage of poor macroeconomic news hit the markets," wrote Edward Meir, an energy analyst at MF Global.
The EIA reported last week that U.S. crude inventories rose to 321 million barrels in the week ended Dec. 12, the highest level in seven months.
Stocks at Cushing, Okla., -- home of the Nymex crude contract's delivery point -- climbed 4.7 million barrels for the week ended Dec. 12 to 27.511 million barrels, the highest level since April 2007.
In other energy trading, January reformulated gasoline fell 3.4% to 83 cents a gallon. January heating oil fell 3.4% to $1.28 a gallon.
