Crude oil declines as dollar strengthens

Oil fell as the dollar strengthened to a six-month high against the euro, limiting the appeal of commodities as a hedge, and shipments of Caspian crude resumed after a pipeline fire.

Crude, gold and wheat dropped as flagging business confidence in Germany boosted the dollar against the single European currency. Two tankers at the Turkish port of Ceyhan are loading crude pumped through the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline for the first time since the one million barrel-a-day link was shut by a fire on Aug. 5.

"I would be surprised if we don't test $110 as we're looking at a rather bearish picture," said Hannes Loacker, an analyst at Raiffeisen Zentralbank Oesterreich in Vienna.