Replay Video

• 
  Stocks take another beating

  Equities faced relentless selling pressure in Friday's session amid ongoing worries about falling oil prices and weakness in China. Jeanne Yurman reports.

  Reuters
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  Stocks plummeted Friday as oil prices fell again.

  Stocks plummeted Friday as oil prices, which were already at a 12-year low, fell below $30 a barrel.

  USA TODAY
• 
  What’s causing the drop in oil prices?

  Lipow Oil Associates President Andrew Lipow on factors impacting oil prices and what’s next for oil companies.

  Fox Business

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Oil prices continued lower on Wednesday, with the Brent benchmark sliding to an 11-year low as investors monitored developments in China and tensions in the Middle East.

Brent for February delivery  dropped $1.57 , or 4.3%, to $34.85 barrel, setting it on track for its lowest settlement price since the summer of 2004, according to FactSet data.

Crude oil for the same month  gave up $1.12, or 3.1%, to $34.85 a barrel. The front-runner contract managed to close above $37 a barrel before the new year, but has been declining every trading day of 2016. The fall has come as signs emerge of slower economic growth in China and as tensions heighten between Iran and Saudi Arabia, two prominent members of the Organization for the Petroleum Exporting Countries.

The impact of the conflict between the two states is the “biggest threat” to the oil market at the moment, top Iranian official Mehdi Asali said on Wednesday, according to Dow Jones Newswires.

The health of China’s economy was also on energy investors’ minds, as they assessed signs of a decline in energy demand from the country. On Wednesday, a Caixin purchasing managers’ index showed China’s service sector expanded at the slowest rate in 17 months, cementing fears that the economy is losing momentum.

Also making markets jittery was an announcement from North Korea that it had successfully detonated its first hydrogen bomb, in its first test of a more powerful form of nuclear weapon than previously in its arsenal.

Elsewhere in the energy complex, natural gas for February  rose 0.1% to $2.33 per million British thermal unit, while gasoline  for the same month sank 4.2% to $1.20 a gallon.