What's Moving the Oil Markets?

•Global crude futures were down slightly Tuesday with the options expiry on Monday failing to create as much volatility on the front-month NYMEX light sweet crude contract as anticipated, market sources said.

•"WTI closing slightly below $55/b should have translated in a total exercise of about 580,000 December puts," oil analyst Olivier Jakob at Petromatrix said in a daily report. "We will wait for the futures open interest data later today to see the remaining futures compositions."

•"Crude hasn't moved too much, though I am surprised to see prices are off so much in the products," a London-based broker said. "For some refiners the crack is not workable at the moment, except gasoil where there is some value."

•Asian and European stock exchanges were also down on the day, with the FTSE 100 in London down around 100 points, or 2.4%, at 4,132 points and Tokyo's Nikkei 225 down 2.3% at 8,328.41.

Updated: November 18, 2008