Crude, Gasoline, Heating Oil Close Lower

Crude prices finished lower Monday in what one New York analyst says was a follow-through on end-of-the-quarter sell-off.

The per-barrel price for crude oil dropped $1.42, or 1.8 percent, to end the session at $80.24 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

The market experienced a little follow-through from Friday’s end-of-the-quarter sell-off, Phil Flynn, an Alaron Trading analyst, told MarketWatch. It’s really some profit-taking as the market consolidates ahead of the upcoming winter and (in light of) the uncertainty about the outlook for the economy.

Gasoline fell 5.98 cents to $1.9813 a gallon while heating oil dropped 4.49 cents to end at $2.1807 a gallon.

The only energy commodity finishing up was natural gas, which rallied 18 cents to finish the day at $$7.05 per million British thermal units.

At the pump, the average gallon of regular unleaded gasoline Monday was $2.790 per gallon, down from the $2.805 per-gallon price reported Friday.