by Perrine Faye
LONDON, Aug 16 (AFP) - World oil prices cooled Monday as traders reacted with relief to an apparent referendum victory by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, just hours after prices scaled a new record peak near 47 dollars.
New York's light sweet crude for September delivery reached a new all-time high level of 46.91 dollars a barrel in Asian trading.
The benchmark contract later stood at 46.41 dollars a barrel in electronic trading, down 17 cents from Friday's close.
In London the price of Brent North Sea crude oil for delivery in September slid 58 cents to 43.30 dollars a barrel in early trading, having soared 1.59 dollars to a record finish of 43.88 dollars on Friday.
Prices eased as electoral authorities in Venezuela announced Chavez had won a referendum on his mandate, with over 58 percent of the vote, though the opposition rejected the partial vote count.
Chavez appeared to have "survived quite easily the referendum, so prices are coming off on the basis of that," said Paul Goodhew, a trader at GNI-Man Financial.
With most votes counted, 58.25 percent of the electorate voted for Chavez to remain in office and 41.74 percent voted for his mandate to be revoked, said Francisco Carrasquero, president of the National Electoral Council.
The opposition said its two members on the five-strong electoral council did not agree with the results.
Chavez has warned that an opposition victory in the referendum would lead to the privatization of the country's state oil firm Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) and prompt oil workers to stage a crippling strike.
"If Chavez didn't win, it would go to a new presidential election and the likelihood would be that he would have won anyway, but the intermediate period would have been very unstable. There would have been a great degree of uncertainty," said Commerzbank analyst Jon Rigby.
"The fear of a strike is still there but there is a general feeling that because Chavez managed to purge PDVSA of 18,000 people or so, the ability to repeat a strike action like two years ago is pretty low. So it is probably the best outcome for the market that he has been reconfirmed," he said.
However, price falls were limited by persistent concerns over unrest in Iraq, a financial crisis at Russian oil titan Yukos and strong demand, analysts said.
"The bottom line is that there is very little excess capacity in the market," said Rigby.
Iraq shut down a crucial southern oil pipeline for security reasons, a spokesman for the Southern Oil Company said Saturday.
Meanwhile Iraqi oil flows resumed Saturday to the Turkish port of Ceyhan at levels not seen for the past year, said an official with the state-owned Northern Oil Company.
And the chief financial officer of Yukos, Bruce Misamore, warned that the energy giant might file for bankruptcy in the next few days unless the Russian authorities reduce the pressure they have been applying.
"If we are insolvent because we do not have the cash to pay our bills, we have to declare bankruptcy. I think it is very likely. Bankruptcy is not a bad scenario, assuming everything is done in accordance with the law," Misamore said in an interview with the Financial Times published Monday.