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Lehman's Fate Hits Commodities Market So what's the connection between economic demand for fuel and the mega-bankruptcy of a venerable Wall Street institution? Lehman Brothers' (LEH) commodity contracts are unwinding, for one thing, and the ripple clearly convinced other players to dump oil futures Monday. Investors who steadily piled into energy as prices rose are looking for excuses, er, signs, of economic weakness so they can bail, says Peter Beutel, who runs an energy risk management firm, Cameron Hanover, in New Canaan, CT. Oil futures fell $5.47, or 5.4%, to close Monday afternoon at $95.71 per barrel on the NYMEX, the lowest close since Feb. 15. The Amex Oil Index (XOI) dropped more than 8% and is now near the 52-week low it set last week. Shares of oil refiner Sunoco (SUN) were especially hard hit, down 20% to $38.18, given the sorry state of refineries in hurricane-hit Texas. Last week, senior Weeden & Co. energy analyst Charles Maxwell told Barron's that oil, today, is worth somewhere between $75 and $115, and could reach $300. Beutel agrees prices could get to $300 in the next bull market, but thinks oil will fall back to between $69 and $79 per barrel in order to properly reflect real fundamentals -- things like global supply shortages, strong demand in emerging markets, global strife cutting off supplies and, of course, bad weather. Despite all this gloom, Monday's oil price drop helped some airline stocks breathe a sigh of relief. Shares of United Airlines parent UAL (UAUA) and American Airlines parent AMR (AMR) were each up nearly 9%. Others including Delta Air Lines (DAL), Northwest Airlines (NWA), Southwest Airlines (LUV) and Continental Airlines (CAL) were off less than 1%. - Dimitra DeFotis, Staff Writer, Barron's Magazine