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Light crude oil prices slammed down to one of the biggest single-day drops recent weeks going down to $51.50 before settling up back slightly to $51.61 down $2.59 for the day.

Brent crude saw similar drops going from $54.02 to $52.19 or a $1.93 a barrel.

Gasoline also saw a major drop of 8 cents a gallon ending at $1.55 today.

This plummets comes as a result of rebuilt confidence in supplies when the U.S. announce its inventories swelled 5.5 million barrels during the last week and oil imports flooded the U.S. marking the third highest average of 10.9 million barrels a day.

Oil speculation has been high in recent days due to a number of factors. Strong economic indicators from China and India, refinery problems in the U.S., terrorist attacks in Saudi and very little production in Iraq have all contributed to the record high prices of crude oil which reached their pinnacle of over $58 a barrel earlier this month.

A number of refineries have seen down time for unscheduled maintenance issue and ConocoPhillips is down again this week with maintenance problems. OPEC has suggested these refinery issues are one of the big reasons gas prices are so high right now.

With OPEC pumping near record highs of 30 million and most inventories strong, experts say the high prices won't continue for the long term, "As long as you continue to put greater supply in the market," Adnan Shihab-Eldin, acting secretary-general of the OPEC, said last week.

John Stith is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.