NEW YORK — Oil prices ended the week tumbling to a seven-week low as massive crude supplies and a surging dollar overshadowed encouraging job numbers.

The U.S. dollar, which is used to price crude contracts, has had an especially heavy influence on oil trading this year. It's helped oil double in price from $40 to more than $80 a barrel in the past several months despite weak consumer demand and bloated supplies.

But as the greenback rallied today, oil prices started to fall.

Benchmark crude for January delivery lost 99 cents to settle at $75.47 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract slumped as low as $74.85 earlier in the day.

The dollar rose sharply just after the Labor Department said the country's unemployment rate fell to 10 percent in November. The economy shed only 11,000 jobs last month — much better than the 130,000 that Wall Street had expected.

Many energy experts think energy prices are still too high, that the price of crude, gasoline and other fuels has risen too far, too fast.