Warm Weather Pushes Heating Oil Prices Down : Energy: The drop in heating oil prices to the lowest levels since November weighed down prices for crude oil.

With continuing unseasonably warm weather sharply reducing demand, U.S. heating oil prices fell Tuesday to their lowest level in nine weeks, dragging crude prices down with them.

Home heating oil for February delivery dropped 1.71 cents to 59.28 cents a gallon on the New York Mercantile Exchange, the lowest closing price since Nov. 17 and the first settlement price below 60 cents a gallon since Nov. 21.

Heating oil has been in a nose dive since warm temperatures hit the nation, particularly the Northeast where most heating oil is consumed, in the past several weeks.

Prices dropped 5.99 cents last week and 2.67 cents Monday.

On the New York Harbor cash market, heating oil was being quoted at 60.80 cents a gallon, down 1.45 cents.

“Temperatures were above normal this week and they’re going to be above normal next week. Demand for heating oil is disappearing,” said Jeffrey Welch, vice president of the international energy desk of Shearson Lehman Hutton in New York.

The heating oil price decline was the strongest in the overall oil market and pulled the price of crude down, said Keith Kinnear, a trader with the Greenwich, Conn.-based Phibro division of Salomon Bros.

“Crude wants to hang in there, but the products drag it down,” he said.

The benchmark West Texas Intermediate crude in the first day of trading the March delivery contract on the Merc slipped 17 cents to $21.60 a barrel.

On the U.S. Gulf Coast cash market, WTI dropped 90 cents to $21.50 a barrel.

Unleaded gasoline for February delivery declined 1.02 cents to 59.62 cents a gallon on the Merc. It fell 1.05 cents to 60.60 cents a gallon on the New York Harbor cash market.

In a related development, imports of crude oil and petroleum products rose last week to 9.6 million barrels a day, marking a six-year high, the oil industry’s American Petroleum Institute reported Tuesday.