Oil tumbles further; Brent below $100

 

The losses come on top of a 6.4% plunge for the commodity in regular-session trade on the New York Mercantile Exchange overnight.

The front-month Nymex crude contract has now lost about 14.9% in 2011 to date, including 10.5% just this week.

Meanwhile, the September contract for Brent crude oil — the other major oil-price benchmark — slumped $4.68, or 4.5%, to $99.06 a barrel, surrendering the psychologically important $100-a-barrel level.

“We think the markets are getting quite oversold and likely overshooting the mark in terms of the news that triggered the sell-off in the first place,” said analysts at MF Global, referring to Standard & Poor’s downgrade of U.S. debt ratings.

Despite speculation that the U.S. Federal Reserve might hint at another monetary-easing program after its rate-setting policy meeting later Tuesday, the analysts said they expected nothing of the sort to happen.

The analysts said such hints from the Fed “could relay the message that the central bank is again being called to the ‘rescue,’ just as it has run out of bullets.”