RTTN:Crude Oil Ends Lower On Strong Dollar, Greek Crisis
(RTTNews) - U.S. crude oil futures closed lower Monday, on a strong dollar and continued worries about the stalemate in Greece over its sovereign debt problems.
Light Sweet Crude Oil futures for March delivery dropped $0.93 or 1 percent to settle at $96.91 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange on Monday. Crude prices had scaled a high of $97.75 a barrel intraday and a low of $96.38 a barrel.
Crude oil prices slipped below $97 Monday morning even as talks over Greece's second bail-out plan progressed.
Greece continued to be under pressure from European Union leaders to agree on a new set of austerity measures for a second bailout package in order to avoid default. Greek Prime Minister Lucas Papademos is slated to have further talks with the European Union, International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank on the issue. As a result, the premier postponed his talks with the three main political parties of his coalition to Tuesday.
The dollar index, which tracks the U.S. unit against six major currencies, rose to 79.135 on Monday from 78.969 in late Friday trade. The dollar traded as high as 79.516 intraday.
Earlier this morning, the U.S. dollar moved back near a 2-week high versus the euro. For a third day, the euro dropped and traded at $1. 3121 on Monday, down from $1.3147 late Friday.
In economic news, euro zone investor confidence improved for the second consecutive month in February, according to a survey by the think tank Sentix. The confidence index rose sharply to -11.1 from -21.1 in January. Economists were expecting the indicator to climb to -16.5.
Separately, Eurostat said the euro area government debt declined to 87.4 percent of gross domestic product in the third quarter of 2011 from 87.7 percent at the end of the second quarter. Compared with the third quarter of 2010, the government debt to GDP ratio rose in the euro area to 87.4 percent from 83.2 percent.
Meanwhile, Germany's factory orders grew 1.7 percent month-on-month in December, after falling 4.9 percent in November, the Federal Ministry of Economy and Technology said. The growth rate exceeded the 1 percent growth forecast.
During this week, traders will look to the crude oil inventories data from the API, due out Tuesday after the market hours, with the EIA report due the subsequent day.
