Crude oil prices tumble overnight

New York -- Crude oil prices tumbled overnight, dropping $2.15 to $117.87 per barrel in New York in spite of a disruption in flow through a critical pipeline in Turkey.

Members of the Kurdistan Workers' Party claimed responsibility for an explosion that sparked a fire at the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline that normally handles 1 million barrels of Caspian region oil a day, The Wall Street Journal reported.

British oil giant BP PLC said it would consider alternate pipelines while the fire burned, but the two pipelines that might be used have one-fifth the capacity of the BTC pipeline, the Journal reported.

With a backdrop of waning U.S. demand, however, the price of oil dropped overnight in New York to19 percent below its July peak.

Other energy prices also dropped overnight. Heating oil prices fell 0.0495 cent to $3.1841 per gallon. Reformulated blendstock gasoline prices fell 0.039 cent to $2.9637 per gallon. Natural gas prices fell 0.141 cent to $8.43 per million British thermal units.

The national average retail price of unleaded gasoline fell 0.013 cent to $3.836 per gallon, the AAA Daily Fuel Gauge Report said.

Copyright 2008 by United Press International.