Crude oil prices are trading lower on Tuesday as the US dollar gained against the euro, yen and UK sterling in Monday’s trading session. US Light crude oil futures for April dropped to $79.66 a barrel by 0525 GMT on the NYMEX, while London April Brent dropped 15 cents to $77.74 on the ICE Futures Exchange. “There’s been a movement away from risk markets like oil and equities,” said Tom Pawlicki of MF Global. According to Pawlicki, falling oil prices tend to correlate with weakness in equities. The slide in oil prices on Monday, which took crude oil futures below $80 for the first time since March 4th, was triggered by US dollar gains, and also fears that a 16 month high in consumer inflation in China might lead the country’s central bank to raise bank reserve requirements as early as this week. “I think China’s economy will undergo a phase of consolidation this year and we probably won’t see the boom it went through in 2009,” said Benson Wang, a crude oil trader at Commodity Broking Services in Sydney.

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