NEW YORK – Citing concerns that rising global interest rates will slow economic growth and curb fuel consumption, Bloomberg reports that the price of crude oil dipped below $70 a barrel on Monday, with crude oil for June delivery dropping $2.64 to settle at $69.40 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange (Nymex).

“There's a malaise in all of the commodity markets,” Steve Bellino, senior vice president for energy risk management at Fimat USA Inc. in New York told the news source, adding, “The interest rate increases should cool the economy and may hurt demand. But keep in mind that we are only one geopolitical event away from a new record.”

According to Qatari Oil Minister Abdullah bin Hamad al-Attiyah, oil prices around $70 a barrel “may slow global economic growth and demand for crude oil,” adding that producers are already oversupplying the market by as much as 2 million barrels a day that are simply “floating around.”

The International Energy Agency (IEA) cut its 2006 global demand estimates for the third time in four months in a report dated May 12. The Paris, France-based agency, an advisor to 26 nations, says world oil demand was lowered by 200,000 barrels a day to an average of 84.83 million barrels a day, writes Bloomberg.

“Lower demand should hardly be surprising because prices have been so high,” Michael Lynch, president of Strategic Energy and Economic Research in Winchester, Massachusetts, told the news source.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported that the U.S. average price of retail gasoline increased to $2.947 a gallon as of May 15, which is up from $2.909 a gallon on May 8.