Richard Valdmanis
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/ 3 January 2008

Oil hits record $100 a barrel

Oil prices vaulted to a record a barrel on Wednesday as violence in Nigeria, tight energy stockpiles and a weaker dollar triggered a surge of speculative buying, dealers said. Oil’s climb to the psychologically key triple-digit price helped send stocks tumbling on Wall Street and further darkened an already gloomy economic outlook in the United States.