Oil Slides as Dollar Rallies

Crude oil futures are falling hard in early morning trading Friday at the New York Mercantile Exchange, pressured by an impressive showing by the U.S. dollar in the European trading session.

West Texas crude oil for September delivery was recently sliding $2.05 to $117.97 a barrel, and Brent crude was down $1.81 at $116.05 a barrel.

The falling price of crude is dragging the remainder of its peers in the energy space down with it; reformulated gasoline was recently losing 4 cents at $2.97 a gallon, heating oil was 5 cents lower at $3.18 a gallon, and near-term natural gas was losing 8 cents at $8.49 per million British thermal units.

The U.S. dollar is rallying against most major foreign currencies Friday morning. The greenback is currently up 2.5 cents against the euro at $1.5070, and the British pound is down more than 2 cents against the dollar at $1.9203. The U.S. Dollar Index, which measures the performance of the dollar against a basket of major international currencies, is adding 1.4% at 75.60.

The price of crude oil tends to decline when the U.S. dollar increases in value because oil is traded in dollars in international markets.

The U.S. Oil Fund (USO Quote), an exchange-traded fund that closely tracks the performance of WTI futures contracts on the Nymex, was recently falling 1.74% at $94.76.