Crude oil settles below $75 per barrel

NEW YORK, Sept. 3 (UPI) -- Crude oil prices wound up below $75 a barrel Friday on the New York Mercantile Exchange, unable to follow the stock markets higher.

After busting past $75.25 earlier in the day, October light sweet crude ended the day down 68 cents at $74.34. Oil dipped 0.8 percent through the week heading into the Labor Day weekend after posting 2 percent gains last week.

"If the bulls cannot rally when equities are higher and the dollar is weaker, it should tell you how concerned they are about the American consumer," Hamza Khan, an analyst with The Schork Report in Philadelphia, told MarketWatch. "The consumer is not back on his feet."

October delivery light, sweet crude oil added 30 cents from a previous settlement to reach $75.28 per barrel. Heating oil prices fell 0.0107 cents to $2.0516 per gallon. Reformulated blendstock gasoline prices fell 0.0064 cents to $1.9152 per gallon. Henry Hub natural gas prices added 0.159 cents to $3.910 per million British thermal units.

At the pump, the national average price of unleaded gasoline rose Friday from Thursday's $2.676 per gallon to $2.681, AAA said.