NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The shutdown of the nation's largest oilfield could send stocks downward when trading begins Monday.

At 8:15 a.m. ET, Nasdaq and S&P futures pointed to a lower start for the major indexes.

Oil prices surged after BP (Charts) announced it was shutting the Prudhoe Bay field in Alaska because of a damaged pipeline.

U.S. light crude rose $1.10 to $75.86 a barrel in electronic trading, while Brent crude trading in London rose $1.12 to $77.29.

"We've had this unspoken rule that when oil prices are above $75 a barrel it's a negative for the market," said Art Hogan, chief market strategist at Jefferies & Co.

Besides the shutdown of the Alaskan oil fields, oil prices were being lifted by the threat from Iran, the world's No. 4 oil exporter, to expand its atomic fuel work and to use its "oil weapon" if the United Nations imposed sanctions aimed at halting the nuclear efforts.

"If they do (impose sanctions), we will react in a way that would be painful for them," said Tehran's chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani. "We do not want to use the oil weapon, it is they who would impose it upon us."

Treasury prices eased, raising the 10-year note yield to 4.91 percent from 4.89 percent late Friday, ahead of Tuesday's Federal Reserve meeting. A weaker than expected jobs report Friday sent bond prices sharply higher on anticipation the Fed will not raise rates Tuesday for the first time since May 2004.

Stocks closed lower in Asia on the soaring oil prices, while stocks in Europe also were down. Shares of BP were off about 2 percent in London trading. The dollar was lower against the euro and the yen.

In corporate news, Ford Motor (Charts) may sell its Land Rover unit along with Jaguar, as part of a shake-up of its British brands, The Sunday Times reported. Ford shares were up 1 percent in heavy trading in London early Monday.

The MTV Networks unit of Viacom (Charts) has agreed to distribute clips from its cable networks over the AdSense network of Internet search engine Google (Charts), the two companies announced Sunday, in what they said could be a test of what could become a new economic model for Web-based video delivery.

The Wall Street Journal reported that several different options grants to top Apple Computer (Charts) executives were dated just before sharp increases in the company's stock between 1997 and 2001. The report, which the paper said is based on regulatory filings, comes after last week's statement from Apple that it expected to restate results after an internal probe of its past options-granting practices had found additional evidence of "irregularities.

• A closer look at pre-market news ahead of the U.S. open.