•Downward momentum from Monday's aggressive selloff spilled over into Tuesday's trading session, with NYMEX light sweet and ICE Brent both trading down over $3/barrel before recovering slightly. At 0922 GMT, the new front-month November contract traded at $91.49/b, down $2.75/b, having earlier hit an intra-day low of $89.90/b. It was the first time Brent has traded under $90/b since February 8. The October NYMEX light sweet crude contract traded at $93.11/b, down $2.60/b, off a low of $91.54/b.

•"Yesterday's decline was mainly about taking off some of the [Hurricane] Ike premium," Olivier Jakob at Petromatrix said in a daily report. "Gasoline was the leading weight on the oil complex while the rest of the commodity spectrum did not show signs of across the board selling. However, with the continued fall in equities and commodities not playing a diversification role anymore we do believe that the risk of margin call selling is still there, especially since credit lines have turned again harder to get.

•More negative news from the financial markets has the potential to filter into oil commodities: The European Central Bank injected a second tranche of funds into money markets releasing a further Eur70 billion ($99.8 billion); and the Bank of England also injected GBP20 billion (Eur25.2 billion, $35.9 billion) into money markets, four times the amount it had offered Monday after the collapse of US investment bank Lehman Brothers, the news agency reported. Focus also centered on the prospects of US insurance giant American International Group, which was struggling to find additional funds to fulfill its insurance obligations.

Updated: September 16, 2008