Oil prices drop

Oil prices tumbled this morning on news of a stronger dollar, despite fears over a supply shortage after the threat of a terrorist attack. Light, sweet crude for September delivery fell $2.46 to $117.56 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange and the contract rose $1.14 cents overnight to settle at $120.02 a barrel. The dollar rose in overnight trading to $0.665 against the euro, and to $110.33 against the yen. After the stronger dollar came news that the Kurdistan Workers Party, a Kurdish separatist group, took credit for a recent sabotage attack on the Turkish section of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline, according to Kurdish news agency Firat. The attack, in which a fire was set on a part of the pipeline, was reported as under control by the Turkish state-run news agency Anatolia, which also reported that the damage might cause the pipeline to stop pumping for up to 15 days.