Just a little oil news. Doesn't seem to be following any logic here. Expect a turnaround and to see the prices go up.

Oil futures extended their declines Thursday, sliding below $100 a barrel at times as concerns about the economy and demand for oil grew and the dollar strengthened.

Retail gas prices, meanwhile, fell further below their recent records, while diesel rose to a new record above $4 a gallon.

For a second day, the oil market appeared focused on the economy and oil's underlying supply and demand fundamentals -- factors it ignored in recent weeks while rocketing to a series of new records. However, some analysts said oil's price swoon may not last for long; most investors expect the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates several more times this year, moves that are sure to put new pressure on the dollar.

Lower interest rates tend to weaken the dollar, driving investors to commodities such as oil that they view as a hedge against inflation. A lower dollar also makes oil less expensive to overseas investors -- a trend that reverses when the dollar strengthens, as it did Thursday.

But there are signs the market may be divorcing itself from its focus on the dollar. Prices were pressured Thursday when the Labor Department said the number of people filing for unemployment benefits jumped by 22,000 last week, much more than expected. A sharp slowdown in the economy could reduce demand for oil and gasoline. On Wednesday, the Energy Department said gasoline demand dropped by 1 percent last week.

Light, sweet crude for May delivery dropped $1.76 to $100.78 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange Thursday after sliding as low as $98.65 earlier. It was the first dip by a front-month oil contract under $100 since March 5. On Wednesday, the expiring April contract fell $4.94 a barrel to settle at $104.48.

Oil has fallen sharply, dropping about 10 percent, since setting a new trading record of $111.80 on Monday.

"(Investors) seem to be coming round to the notion that the deterioration in the U.S. (economic) picture cannot be ignored on the pretext that commodities are a 'weak dollar play' or an 'inflation hedge', and thus immune from downward pressure," said Edward Meir, an analyst at MF Global UK Ltd., in a research note.

Word of an unexpected outage at a 100,000 barrel a day LyondellBasell Industries refinery in Houston, according to Dow Jones Newswires, sent gas futures higher Thursday, pulling oil off its earlier lows. April gasoline futures rose 4.43 cents to $2.6046 a gallon. The stock market also helped oil come back from a steeper loss; Wall Street advanced after the Philadelphia Federal Reserve said manufacturing activity in the Philadelphia region is falling by less this month than it did in February.

At the pump, meanwhile, the national average price of a gallon of gas slipped by 0.4 cent overnight to $3.275, according to AAA and the Oil Price Information Service. Gas prices followed oil to a number of recent records, but have retreated slightly over the past several days as oil has wavered.