Oil prices follow Wall Street on wild ride

Oil prices swung wildly Thursday following a lead from Wall Street, which sank 300 points before investors flooded back into the market.

Light, sweet crude for December delivery rose $2.08 to settle at $58.24 on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Crude earlier dipped as low as $54.67, a price last seen in January 2007, on reports that the world's biggest economies are in recession and that energy demand has declined to decade-ago levels.

The Dow dropped briefly below 8,000 _ falling more than 300 points _ to retest lows that it hit Oct. 10 before a sharp climb into positive territory. The Standard & Poor's 500 index dropped to 818.69 before staging its …