Crude Oil Drops $3 In A Minute

By Brendan Conway

Jittery afternoon in the oil markets, where crude futures plunged $3 in less than a minute shortly before 2 p.m., for no immediately obvious reason.

In such cases, the chatter inevitably turns to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. But we have no credible reports of a release at this point. Heck, we don’t even have a shady report to point to. CNBC’s befuddled anchors are just now floating the idea that options expiry may be playing a role.

And CNBC has a White House spokesman saying there’s no change to the strategic petroleum reserve.

“Fat finger” error? Probably not: Brent moved and a few other commodity markets weakened around the same time.

“The market is just showing its vulnerability. We’ve got a $10 to $15 premium just on Iran, so the market is susceptible to just come off,” Tony Rosado, a broker at Dorado Energy Services, tells Dow Jones Newswires’ Jerry A. DiColo.

The United States Oil Fund (USO), the United States 12-Month Oil Fund (USL) and theBarclays iPath GS Crude Oil Total Return ETN (OIL) are each down more than 3 percent in afternoon trading. The leveraged ProShares Ultra DJ UBS Crude Oil (UCO) is down 6.4%.