Oil is getting slammed

Natural gas and oil are getting crushed.

On Thursday afternoon, West Texas Intermediate crude oil was down over 5% to well below $49 a barrel as the commodity has taken a serious turn lower in the last hour or so.

There is no obvious news tied to oil's decline on Thursday, but this latest leg lower in oil comes as a number of Wall Street analysts have continued to say that though oil prices have somewhat stabilized in the last several week, prices are going lower.

Natural gas, meanwhile, is down more than 5% after the Energy Information Administration reported that stockpiles fell less than expected in the week of February 20.

Storage fell by 219 billion cubic feet to 1,938 bcf, and according to MarketWatch analysts had forecast a decline of as much as 243 million bcf.

Via Reuters' Edward McAllister, US natural gas prices are the lowest for the month of February since 2012. And this is in spite of harsh winter weather that has swept across the East Coast.

Here's a chart showing the plunge in natural gas:

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