NEW YORK (AP) — Oil prices fell again Monday on worries that fraud charges against Goldman Sachs could prompt a retreat from energy commodities to more safe-haven investments.

Traders also worried that disruption to air travel from the Icelandic volcano will lower demand for jet fuel and could hamper the global economic recovery.

Benchmark crude for May delivery tumbled $1.84, or 2.2 percent, to $81.40 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Earlier shares fell as low as $80.58.

Oil fell $2.27 to $83.24 a barrel on Friday after the Securities and Exchange Commission said Goldman Sachs & Co. defrauded investors by failing to disclose key information about mortgage investments it sold as the housing market was collapsing in 2008.

Investors were worried about how Goldman’s predicament could affect commodity futures and speculated that Goldman may have to liquidate some positions in crude to pay for penalties if found liable.

Oil was trading around $87 per barrel about two weeks ago and there was talk among analysts of a run-up to triple digits. Some tepid U.S. economic data quelled that enthusiasm. And then the Goldman news hit Friday.

Oil analyst Stephen Schork said “the allegations against Goldman Sachs could be the nudge required to push the market into a severe correction in the short term,” Schork said.

Meanwhile, a huge cloud of volcanic ash has shut down air traffic in most of Europe for four days — stranding passengers and scuttling travel plans and freight services that could end up costing billions of dollars.

At the very least, traders say the volcano crisis will lower demand from airlines for jet fuel.

“The market had underestimated the impact of the volcano,” said Clarence Chu, a trader with market maker Hudson Capital Energy in Singapore. “There’s still a lot of uncertainty about how much this will affect the overall economy.”

Falling crude prices have given U.S. motorists a break a the pump, as the national average gasoline pump price slid less than a penny to $2.862 a gallon, according to AAA, Wright Express and Oil Price Information Service. A gallon of regular unleaded is 4.4 cents more expensive than a month ago and 80.5 cents higher than a year ago.

In other Nymex trading in May contracts, heating oil fell 5.65 cents to $2.1606 a gallon, and gasoline fell 2.64 cents to $2.2506 a gallon. Natural gas fell 10.4 cents to $3.935 per 1,000 cubic feet.

In London, Brent crude’s June contract was down $1.91 at $84.08 on the ICE futures exchange.

Associated Press writers Pablo Gorondi in Budapest, Hungary and Alex Kennedy in Singapore contributed to this report.

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