Oil Prices Again Top $100 Briefly

Crude oil futures briefly climbed to more than $100 a barrel for the second consecutive day Thursday before falling back on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Prices hovered near the $100 mark most of the day and moved over it in afternoon trading in response to a report of falling U.S. crude inventories. However, crude backed off and closed down 44 cents at $99.18 a barrel.

In its report Thursday, the U.S. Energy Information Agency said U.S. crude inventories fell for a seventh consecutive week, down by 4 million barrels to 289.6 million barrels in the week ended Dec. 28. The inventories were the lowest in three years.

Natural gas closed down 17.3 cents at $7.667 per million British thermal units.

Hearing oil fell 2.13 cents to $2.7191 a gallon.

Reformulated gas was down 2.75 cents at $2.5414 a gallon.

The average U.S. gallon of regular unleaded gasoline was $3.052, up slightly from Wednesday’s $3.049, the AAA reported.