Oil prices dive on darkening Europe fears

Oil prices plunged Thursday on profit-taking on the previous day's jump and European debt crisis worries grew after Spain had to pay record-high interest rates on its public borrowing. New York's main contract, West Texas Intermediate (WTI) light sweet crude for delivery in December, closed at $98.82 a barrel, down $3.77 from Wednesday's closing level. The plunge more than wiped out Wednesday's $3.22 gain, driven by news of the sale of a US pipeline stake that could reduce transport bottlenecks and boost demand for US and Canadian crude. In London, Brent North Sea crude for delivery in January slumped $4.17 to settle at $108.22 a barrel. "There is a good profit-taking -- technically, it just couldn't hold up," said John Kilduff at Again Capital, noting "concerns about the eurozone." "Crude oil prices retreated in a healthy correction lower, tracking heavy losses in the global equity markets," said Myrto Sokou, an analyst at Sucden Financial Research. Global stock markets fell on Thursday as France and Spain, the second- and fourth-largest economies in the eurozone, faced a sharp spike in borrowing costs. Spain's treasury had to pay a record 6.975 percent when it raised 3.6 billion euros ($4.8 billion) in a sale of 10-year bonds. France, the eurozone's second-largest economy, also was forced to pay sharply higher rates to raise 7.0 billion euros in new bond sales. Oil prices leaped higher Wednesday after Canadian company Enbridge said it was buying a 50 percent stake in the Seaway pipeline, which runs between the US Gulf of Mexico coast and the Cushing, Oklahoma oil storage hub. Enbridge and Enterprise Product Partners, which owns the other 50 percent of Seaway, said they would reverse the pipeline to move oil to the Gulf coast refining hub from Cushing starting in mid-2012, a move which could help demand for US crude and reduce the broad gap between WTI and Brent. "The reversal of the Seaway pipeline (has already) resulted in a significant narrowing of the WTI-Brent spread, due to the notion that the so-called US Midwest glut will now be resolved," Barclays Capital analyst Amrita Sen said.