Still Falling

Oil goes beneath $60 a barrell early today:

Oil prices fell below $60 a barrel Monday amid signs of growing petroleum inventories and after BP PLC said it had permission to restart the eastern half of Alaska's Prudhoe Bay oil field.

"Hedge funds and investors have been bailing out because geopolitical tensions have eased and they also realize that inventories are high during this period of seasonally weak demand at the end of summer," said Victor Shum, an analyst with Purvin & Gertz.

Light, sweet crude for November delivery fell 84 cents to $59.71 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange by afternoon in Europe. November Brent crude on London's ICE Futures exchange dropped 85 cents to $59.56 a barrel.

As oil prices have fallen, so have prices at the pump. The Lundberg Survey of 7,000 gas stations across the United States showed Sunday that retail gasoline prices dropped nearly 24 cents a gallon in the past two weeks, the third consecutive decline since a mid-August peak. The national average for self-serve regular was about $2.42 on Friday, according to the survey.