Oil prices fall with global stock markets

Oil slipped below $54 a barrel Wednesday as stock markets across the globe fell and yet another U.S. government report showed how badly the housing market has been hit.

Governments, businesses and consumers cut back on energy use when the economy slows and crude prices reflected those perceptions.

Light, sweet crude for January delivery traded down 66 cents at $54.10 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange after falling to a 52-week low of $53.66.

Consumer prices plunged by the largest amount in the past 61 years in October as gasoline pump prices dropped by a record amount.

The Labor Department said Wednesday that consumer prices fell by 1 percent last month, the biggest one-month decline on records that go back to February 1947. The drop was twice as large as the 0.5 percent decline analysts expected.

Construction of new homes and apartments fell by 4.5 percent in October to an annual rate of 791,000 units, the Commerce Department reported. It was the slowest construction pace on records going back to 1959.

Supply disruptions that once roiled markets have not slowed crude's decline.

"Even reports of renewed rebel activity in Nigeria are not enough to spur a rally," Addison Armstrong, director of market research at Tradition Energy, said in a morning note.

Chevron Corp. invoked "force majeure" Tuesday on 90,000 barrels a day of its Nigeria gross production after a pipeline was breached by militants in the Niger Delta.

Oil prices have fallen 63 percent since reaching a record $147.27 a barrel in mid-July.

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