From Bloomberg……

Crude oil tumbled, capping the biggest weekly drop since the Persian Gulf War in 1991, as rising stockpiles at Cushing, Oklahoma, leave little room to store supplies for delivery next year.

Supplies at Cushing, where oil that’s traded in New York is stored, rose 21 percent to 27.5 million barrels last week, the highest since May 2007, the Energy Department said on Dec. 17. OPEC’s biggest output cut in more than a decade this week failed to stop a price drop as the recession sapped demand.

“At this stage it’s not what OPEC is doing that moves the market; instead it’s the big builds at Cushing,” said Nauman Barakat, senior vice president of global energy futures at Macquarie Futures USA Inc. in New York.

Crude oil for January delivery fell $2.35, or 6.5 percent, to $33.87 a barrel at 2:46 p.m. on the New York Mercantile Exchange, the lowest settlement since Feb. 10, 2004. Futures declined 27 percent since Dec. 12, the biggest weekly drop since January 1991. Prices have fallen 77 percent from the record $147.27 a barrel reached on July 11.