Crude Oil Prices Tick Downward

Crude oil futures were lower Thursday in New York, continuing the three-month slide that has coincided with traders' worries the global economy is slowing sharply.

November-dated light, sweet crude was down $2.05 to $86.90 a barrel, and Brent crude was off $1.04 to $83.32 a barrel.

Heating oil was losing 6 cents to $2.44 a gallon, and reformulated gasoline was fractionally weaker at $2.03 a gallon. Natural gas rallied a bit, adding 6 cents to $6.80 per million British thermal units.

Among energy stocks,

Exxon Mobil

(XOM) - Get Report

,

ConocoPhillips

(COP) - Get Report

and

Chevron

(CVX) - Get Report

were all losing more than 5%.

BP

(BP) - Get Report

and

Royal Dutch Shell

(RDS.A)

were showing similar declines.

Schlumberger

(SLB) - Get Report

and

Halliburton

(HAL) - Get Report

were easing less than 1% each. The

U.S. Oil

(USO) - Get Report

ETF was down 1.8%.

Elsewhere in commodities, metals were flat. Gold was up 20 cents at $886.70 an ounce, and silver was giving back 4 cents to $11.83.

This article was written by a staff member of TheStreet.com.