•Global crude futures fell to fresh 15-week lows Tuesday, on the back of economic-growth concerns and strength in the US dollar, sources said.

•"The macro inputs continue to prevail over micro inputs in the oil markets. The [ICE] Dollar Index continued to strengthen and pressured the main dollar commodities (oil and metals)," Petromatrix oil analysts said in a report. The ICE Dollar Index reached a new six-month high at 76.616 in early European trading. Against the euro it firmed to $1.4812, up 7.6% in the last month.

•The decline in prices comes against the backdrop of the Georgia-Russia conflict and last week's pipeline explosion on the 1 million b/d Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan crude pipeline in Turkey, which resulted in a fire that was finally put out Monday. "Bullish news is being ignored and bearish news being latched onto," a London-based broker said.

Updated: August 12, 2008