Oil Drops $2 a Barrel

Oil prices dropped $2.35 to $60.42 a barrel on Monday based on downgraded global demand. The drop in U.S. light, sweet crude for April delivery represented a 3.8% slip in price.

The May contract for crude, which begins Wednesday, also fell sharply, sinking $2.24 to $61.96, or about 3.6 percent.

On the New York Mercantile Exchange, heating oil slipped 3.96 cents to close to 1.7417 dollars a gallon as gasoline futures fell 3 cents to settle at 1.8301 dollars per gallon. Natural gas futures fell 21.8 cents to 6.835 per 1,000 cubic feet. OPEC lowered its forecast Friday for global oil demand growth in 2006 by 110,000 barrels a day. OPEC set oil demand growth for this year at 1.46 million barrels a day and demand for the year at 84.5 million barrels a day.