NEW YORK-A strong warn­ing from the World Bank that growth in Asia may slow fur­ther dragged down the price of oil yes­ter­day. The World Bank sig­naled the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a "more pro­nounced slow­down" in Chi­na, the world's sec­ond largest econ­o­my af­ter the US. It al­so cut its growth fore­cast for Asia. Red-hot growth in emerg­ing mar­kets like Chi­na and In­dia helped boost oil con­sump­tion com­ing out of the glob­al re­ces­sion. Bench­mark crude fell 57 cents to US$89.30 in af­ter­noon trad­ing in New York. The con­tract hasn't closed low­er since Au­gust 2.

At the pump, gas prices re­main stub­born­ly high. The na­tion­al av­er­age for gaso­line rose three cents over the week­end to US$3.818 a gal­lon. But Cal­i­for­ni­ans are now pay­ing an av­er­age of US$4.668 a gal­lon, the high­est price in the na­tion, af­ter a jump of 50 cents in the past week. Some mo­torists there are pay­ing over US$5. In re­sponse, Gov Jer­ry Brown has or­dered state smog reg­u­la­tors to al­low cheap­er win­ter-blend gas to be sold three weeks ear­ly in the state. And Sen­a­tor Di­anne Fe­in­stein has called for a fed­er­al in­ves­ti­ga­tion be­cause she doesn't think the high­er prices are re­lat­ed to sup­ply and de­mand.

Ex­perts are pre­dict­ing prices in Cal­i­for­nia could climb to an av­er­age of US$4.85 be­fore com­ing down. Chi­na's eco­nom­ic growth and de­mand for pe­tro­le­um have been key sup­ports for oil prices since glob­al en­er­gy de­mand was hit by re­ces­sion af­ter the fi­nan­cial cri­sis in 2008. Wor­ries about Spain and Eu­rope's debt cri­sis con­tin­ued even as eu­ro zone of­fi­cials gath­ered in Lux­em­bourg to launch the re­gion's bailout fund. The eu­ro re­treat­ed from a two-week peak against the dol­lar and yen.The con­cerns about Asia weighed on glob­al and US eq­ui­ties. More ex­changes of fire be­tween Turkey and Syr­ia yes­ter­day and bet­ter-than-ex­pect­ed Ger­man ex­port da­ta helped lim­it oil mar­ket loss­es, an­a­lysts and bro­kers said. (AP)