With inflation so high, every little bit helps.
Oil slips to $59 on global growth pessimismVIENNA, Austria (AP) -- Oil prices slipped to $59 a barrel Wednesday as investors grappled with the prospect that global growth next year will slow more than originally feared, cutting demand for gasoline and other crude products.
Expectations that a snapshot of the U.S. inventories will also show reduced consumption of oil and derivatives also acted as a drag on the market.
Light, sweet crude for December delivery was down 32 cents to $59.01 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange by afternoon in Europe. The contract overnight fell $3.08 to settle at $59.33, the lowest closing price since March 2007.
The steep price declines of the past half year may be temporary. The International Energy Agency -- the energy monitor for the world's industrialized nations -- has nearly doubled its forecast for the price of oil over the next 20 years, because of rising demand in the developing world as well as surging costs of production as oil needs to be sourced from more expensive offshore fields and state-run companies.
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