In what apparently is an upshot of the growing concerns about the US lawmakers' failure to avert a fiscal crisis, oil prices witnessed the biggest drop in over two weeks on Friday.

Amid apprehensions galore that Washington will not be able to take a timely action to stop the country from going over the 'fiscal cliff' by the end-of-year deadline, a $1.47-cent drop - to $88.66 a barrel - was reported on Friday for New York's main contract, West Texas Intermediate (WTI) for February delivery.

Furthermore, a $1.23 - or 1.1 percent - drop in Brent North Sea crude for February delivery resulted in prices ending at $108.97 per barrel on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange. With a $20.31 premium to WTI, the European benchmark crude witnessed an increase over the Thursday figures of $20.07.

The Friday fall in oil prices comes after an earlier-this-week rise, on a sharper-than-anticipated drop in US crude inventories as well as speculations that US lawmakers will reach a compromise to avert a series of tax increases and spending cuts which will become effective from January 2013.

Noting that "oil has been bulled up all week on hopes that the US is going to resolve this problem and now it appears that there is no quick solution," Addison Armstrong - Stamford, Connecticut-based Tradition Energy's director of market research - said: "We are running out of time and that's got the market spooked."