West Texas Intermediate

The price of the main grade of U.S. oil briefly plunged below $13 a barrel on Friday, a level last seen in 1978, and isolated instances of another 1970s phenomenon--gasoline price wars--started to emerge. Saudi Arabia's oil minister said that popularly traded crudes could drop to as low as $10 before bottoming out. On the New York Mercantile Exchange, West Texas Intermediate crude for April delivery sank to $12.70 a barrel as trading opened Friday, then recovered somewhat to close at $13.26.

Oil slipped lower in New York futures trading but managed to stay above $90 a barrel. The U.S. benchmark West Texas Intermediate grade of crude declined 10 cents to $90.76 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange because of trader concerns about European economies.  In London, the European benchmark Brent crude fell 75 cents to $106.36. Meanwhile, motorists were enjoying a bit of relief at the pump - even in California where the average gasoline price set a record over the Memorial Day weekend.

Retail gasoline prices fell in California and across much of the nation over the last week, while crude oil recovered a little of the previous weeks' losses. The average cost of a gallon of regular gasoline in California fell 3.1 cents to $4.336 a gallon, according to the Energy Department's weekly survey of fuel prices, released Monday. That followed two weeks of increases totaling 28.1 cents a gallon. Last year at this time, a gallon of regular gasoline in California was 12.1 cents cheaper.

With crude prices bouncing around above $90 a barrel, many companies are trying to wring the oil out of their operations. Ford Motor Co.is using soybean foam in its upholstery.McDonald's Corp.is testing paper cups for hot drinks in place of polystyrene containers, which start out as petroleum.Coca-Cola Co.andPepsiCo Inc.are becoming bioplastic bottlers. And a California cleaning products manufacturer has set out to eliminate diesel from its fleet. "When oil was cheap, it became pervasive throughout our economy in hundreds and hundreds of invisible ways, as a raw material," said Daniel Yergin, an energy consultant who wrotea Pulitzer Prize-winninghistory of the oil industry.

In separate announcements, Unocal Corp. and the Marathon Oil unit of U.S. Steel Corp. said they have reduced their posted price for West Texas Intermediate, the major U.S. grade, to $27.50 a barrel from $28.50. As recently as mid-October, the U.S. oil industry was maintaining a $30-a-barrel price for West Texas Intermediate. Most major oil companies are posting prices between $28 and $29 a barrel for West Texas Intermediate, but a few already have dropped below $27.

West Texas Intermediate crude oil plummeted 95 cents Thursday on the New York Mercantile Exchange to $14.17 a barrel. Earlier, it had traded as low as $13.85 before regaining some lost ground. Separately, Diamond Shamrock slashed the price it is willing to pay for West Texas Intermediate, the nation's benchmark crude, to $16.50 a barrel--the lowest level in seven years.

Retail gasoline prices fell in California and across much of the nation over the last week, while crude oil recovered a little of the previous weeks' losses. The average cost of a gallon of regular gasoline in California fell 3.1 cents to $4.336 a gallon, according to the Energy Department's weekly survey of fuel prices, released Monday. That followed two weeks of increases totaling 28.1 cents a gallon. Last year at this time, a gallon of regular gasoline in California was 12.1 cents cheaper.

Crude oil futures tumbled to a six-month low overnight amid worries about oversupply in the U.S. and political instability in Greece. West Texas Intermediate futures slumped $2.17 on the New York Mercantile Exchange to $91.81 a barrel in midday trading, an intra-session low not reached since Nov. 3. They closed Tuesday down 80 cents to $93.98 a barrel, the lowest end-of-day number since Dec. 19. Traders reacted to a Tuesday report from the...

California's streak of seven straight weeks of gasoline price declines has ended because of widespread refinery maintenance shutdowns that have reduced fuel supplies by nearly a third compared with a year ago. In California, the average price of a gallon of regular gasoline was $4.213 a gallon, up 2.7 cents from a week earlier, according to the Energy Department's weekly survey of service stations, released Monday. The U.S. average continued to fall, dropping 4 cents to $3.790 a gallon, the Energy Department survey showed.

The Energy Department's weekly fuel price survey shows $3.941 as the national average for a gallon of regular gasoline. But the number has been driven recently by the East and West coasts, which have the highest prices in the 48 contiguous states. A gallon of regular gasoline on the West Coast is averaging $4.231 a gallon. On the East Coast, the average is $3.911 a gallon. That compares with the Rocky Mountain states ($3.748 a gallon), the Gulf Coast states ($3.802) and the Midwest ($3.905)

With average U.S. oil prices at their highest for this time of the year, gasoline prices likewise climbed to their highest average for the first 12 weeks of the year, according to Energy Department statistics. The benchmark West Texas Intermediate crude rose 16 cents Monday to $107.03 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. That helped push up the national average for a gallon of regular gasoline 5.1 cents over the last week to $3.918, the Energy Department said. That was 32.2 cents higher than a year earlier.

  President Obama launched a fiery defense of his energy policy Thursday amid growing pressure to stem rising gasoline prices, perhaps by releasing oil from the nation's emergency petroleum reserve. Obama avoided mentioning the Strategic Petroleum Reserve option, but acknowledged the pain Americans feel at the pump and mocked Republicans for "acting like 'We've got a magic wand and we will give you cheap gas forever.' " "We've seen it all before; we know better. You know better," he told a crowd at Prince George's Community College in Maryland.

Maybe you'll want to start salting away money for 2012 fuel costs now. Get ready to see $4-a-gallon gasoline in various parts of the U.S. sometime this spring, according to one prediction. Another prediction says that some of the nation's biggest cities -- such as Chicago, Los Angeles and New York -- will see record Memorial Day averages of $4.55 to $4.95 for a gallon of regular gasoline. The predictions come from two sources. One is the Oil Price Information Service in New Jersey, which provides the daily averages for the AAA Fuel Gauge Report, using retail receipts from more than 100,000 retail outlets across the U.S. The other is the annual price outlook from GasBuddy.com, where 300,000 to 400,000 member motorists a day report and post online and through phone apps the highest and lowest local prices they see. There are more than 250 price-posting GasBuddy websites devoted to various towns and cities across the U.S. and Canada.

The U.S. Energy Department predicted this week that the price of crude oil would average more than $100 a barrel this year for the first time ever. The prediction came from the Energy Department's Energy Information Administration in its most recent Short Term Energy Outlook. Energy Department officials were commenting on their expectations for the price of the U.S. commodities trading benchmark, which is West Texas Intermediate crude. Futures in West Texas Intermediate crude are traded on the New York Mercantile Exchange.