Oil falls to near $75 ahead of US company earnings

[July 12, 2010]  SINGAPORE (AP) -- Oil prices fell to near $75 a barrel Monday in Asia as investors looked to the start of second quarter company earnings reports this week for clues about the strength of the U.S. economy.

Benchmark crude for August delivery was down 76 cents to $75.33 a barrel at late afternoon Singapore time in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract added 65 cents to settle at $76.09 on Friday.

Oil prices rose last week on investor optimism that the U.S. economy, while likely to slow, won't slip into recession later this year.

"The bottom line is that the economic recovery is slowing down sooner than many analysts expected," energy consultant and trader The Schork Group said in a report. "But we will take a slow recovery over no recovery any day of the week."

Traders will be eyeing closely second quarter corporate earnings season, beginning this week with reports from Alcoa Inc., Intel Corp., Google Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp.

Oil investors often look to equities as a barometer of overall investor sentiment, and all major Asian stock markets rose Monday after the Dow Jones industrial average jumped 5.3 percent last week

In other Nymex trading in August contracts, heating oil fell 1.59 cents to $2.0098 a gallon, gasoline dropped 1.72 cents to $2.0528 a gallon and natural gas was steady at $4.400 per 1,000 cubic feet.

Brent crude was down 57 cents to $74.85 a barrel on the ICE futures exchange.

[Associated Press; By ALEX KENNEDY]

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