By Myra P. Saefong and V. Phani Kumar, MarketWatch
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — Crude-oil futures seesawed between small losses and gains Monday, finding some support after hefty losses last week, but disappointing U.S. jobs data, mounting worries the euro-zone and weak economic data in China continued to weigh on investor confidence.
July futures for light, sweet crude-oil CLN2 +0.08% fell 38 cents, or 0.5%, to $82.85 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. It touched a low of $81.21 as well as a high of $83.73.
The front-month contract lost $3.30 Friday on the New York Mercantile Exchange after the May U.S. nonfarm payrolls report, to tally a weekly loss of 8.4%. Read about the jobs data.
Overall, “poor economic data from the U.S. and China, plus the sovereign-debt crisis in the euro zone,” have caused the U.S. dollar to appreciate and have put equity and commodities markets under pressure, said analysts at Commerzbank, in a research note Monday.
“In the near future there is no end in sight to the downward spiral,” they said.
On Monday, however, the ICE dollar index DXY -0.32% , which measures the greenback’s performance against six major global currencies, slipped a bit to 82.567 from 82.878 in New York late on Friday. Read Currencies report.
Weakness in the dollar tends to provide support for dollar-denominated commodities.
On ICE Futures London, Brent crude extended recent declines, headed for a fourth-straight session loss Monday. July Brent crude UK:LCON2 -0.69% fell 64 cents to $97.79 a barrel.
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries basket price fell below $100 a barrel to stand at $97.44 on June 1, according to data from OPEC’s website.
“For the first time since February 2011, the OPEC basket price has dipped below the $100 a barrel mark, which Saudi Arabia considers to be the ideal level,” the Commerzbank analysts said. “This puts pressure on the biggest OPEC producer to reduce its recent oil production of more than 10 million barrels per day in order to prevent prices falling even further.”
Data pointing to weakness in China’s services sector also weighed on oil.
The nonmanufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index for May dropped to 55.2 in May from 56.1 in April, marking its lowest reading since the seasonally-adjusted figures were introduced in 2011, according to China Federation of Logistics and Purchasing and China’s National Bureau of Statistics. Read full story.
Over in the U.S., orders for goods produced in U.S. factories decreased 0.6% in April. Economists surveyed by MarketWatch expected orders to rise by 0.1%.
Against that backdrop, prices for other energy products declined. July futures for gasoline RBN2 -0.11% shed 0.5% to $2.64 per gallon and those for heating-oil HON2 -0.34% lost 0.7% to $2.61 per gallon.
Natural-gas futures for delivery in the same month NGN12 +2.84% , which tumbled 4% on Friday, rose 1.8%, or 3.1%, or 7 cents, to $2.39 per million British thermal units.
Myra Saefong is a MarketWatch reporter based in San Francisco.
Varahabhotla Phani Kumar is a reporter in MarketWatch's Hong Kong bureau. Barbara Kollmeyer in Madrid contributed to this report.
