NEW YORK-A stronger dol­lar and high­er in­ter­est rates in Chi­na kept a lid on the price of oil yes­ter­day.

Bench­mark West Texas In­ter­me­di­ate crude for Au­gust de­liv­ery lost 24 cents to set­tle at US$96.65 per bar­rel on the New York Mer­can­tile Ex­change. Brent crude, used to price many in­ter­na­tion­al oil va­ri­eties, added a pen­ny to set­tle at US$113.62 per bar­rel on the ICE Fu­tures ex­change in Lon­don. Crude had been ris­ing since last week, near­ly re­cov­er­ing from a late-June drop to around US$90 a bar­rel fol­low­ing the an­nounce­ment that the US and oth­er coun­tries would re­lease 60 mil­lion bar­rels of crude in­to world mar­kets. Some in­vest­ment banks said prices would head high­er any­way as world sup­plies tight­ened lat­er this year. By yes­ter­day in­vestors were again fo­cused on short-term con­cerns about the glob­al econ­o­my.

Mas­ter­Card Spend­ing­Pulse said that US mo­torists bought less gaso­line last week for the 15th week in a row, com­pared to last year. Its week­ly sur­vey, which is based on cred­it card pur­chas­es at thou­sands of re­tail gas sta­tions around the coun­try, said that mo­torists bought 0.5 per cent less gaso­line last week. The dol­lar rose as the eu­ro sank af­ter Por­tu­gal's bonds were down­grad­ed to junk sta­tus. Cred­it rat­ings agency Moody's said Por­tu­gal, like Greece, will prob­a­bly need more in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nan­cial aid to deal with its debt prob­lems. Oil is priced in US cur­ren­cy, and it tends to fall as crude be­comes more ex­pen­sive for in­vestors hold­ing for­eign mon­ey.

Chi­na raised a key in­ter­est rate for the third time this year on Wednes­day in an ef­fort to con­trol in­fla­tion. Chi­na's in­fla­tion rate hit a 34-month high in May. High­er in­ter­est rates could slow eco­nom­ic growth there and de­mand for oil. In oth­er Nymex trad­ing for Au­gust con­tracts, heat­ing oil gained less than a pen­ny to set­tle at US$2.9633 per gal­lon and gaso­line fu­tures rose 2.02 cents to set­tle at US$2.9976 per gal­lon. Nat­ur­al gas lost 14.9 cents to set­tle at US$4.222 per 1,000 cu­bic feet.