Oil eases back with holiday approaching; less than $99/barrel NEW YORK, Dec. 31 (UPI) -- Crude oil prices slid to less than $99 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange Tuesday morning with most equity markets closed in Europe. The CAC, IBEX and FTSE 100 indexes were open but others were shuttered for the New Year's Eve holiday. Light, sweet crude on the NYMEX listing shed 57 cents to $98.72 per barrel. Reformulated gasoline blendstock for January gave up 0.77 cents to $2.78 a gallon. January heating oil added 0.25 cents to $3.0797 a gallon while natural gas lost 6 cents to $4.36 per million British thermal units. The national average price of unleaded regular gasoline rose at the pump, climbing to $3.318 a gallon from Monday's $3.312, the AAA Daily Fuel Gauge Report said.