Oil price 2012 Delivery Opened 100 USD per barrel-NYME

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Oil prices for January 2012 delivery opened at $100 a barrel, down 20 cents, or 0.2 percent, in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange today.

The contract traded at $100.08 at 8:09 a.m. in Tokyo. Prices dropped 0.2 percent yesterday.

Oil declined after more Americans filed applications for unemployment benefits and as European and Chinese manufacturing weakened last month.

Futures fell for the first time in five days in New York after the Labor Department said U.S. jobless claims rose by 6,000 to 402,000 last week. Manufacturing in Europe and China shrank to the lowest levels since 2009. Prices advanced earlier on a report that showed U.S. industry grew more than expected.

“The uptick in the weekly jobless numbers is a reminder that there’s a lot to do before there’s an economic rebound of substantial strength,” said John Kilduff, a partner at Again Capital, a New York-based hedge fund focusing on energy. “The European economy is still very weak as well. The demand picture for oil remains very challenging.”

Crude oil for January delivery declined 16 cents to settle at $100.20 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Futures rose 7.7 percent in November and are up 9.7 percent this year.

Brent oil for January settlement fell $1.53, or 1.4 percent, to $108.99 a barrel on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange.

The European contract’s premium to West Texas Intermediate crude traded in New York narrowed $1.37 to $8.79 a barrel today, the smallest differential since March 8. The spread surged to a record high of $27.88 on Oct. 14.

“Investors are trying to figure out what to do with the WTI-Brent spread,” said Bill O’Grady, chief market strategist at Confluence Investment Management in St. Louis, which oversees $1.3 billion. “The most important thing we’re looking at today is the narrowing of the spread. We have to find the level justified by the fundamentals.”