Oil prices fall $3 a barrel

Crude futures fell by nearly $3 a barrel on Monday as traders anticipated warmer weather in the U.S. Northeast later in the week and responded to weekend snowstorms in the U.S. Midwest that kept motorists off the road.

Traders brushed off any impact from the massive earthquake off the coast of Indonesia, where the government oil company and Exxon Mobil Corp., which produces and process natural gas there, said operations and exports were continuing as normal after brief power outages.

Light, sweet crude for February delivery plunged $2.86, or 6 percent, to $41.32 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange in afternoon trade.

Heating oil futures plummeted 8.61 cents to $1.24 per gallon on Nymex, where gasoline futures sank 6.23 cents to $1.067 per gallon and natural gas futures declined by 46.8 cents to $6.20 per 1,000 cubic feet.

The earthquake and tidal wave that spread from southeast Asia to east Africa on Sunday was so far not a factor in oil markets, analysts and traders said, though future export delays are not out of the question.