LONDON - World oil prices cooled Tuesday on profit-taking, as OPEC considered hiking output after crude soared to historic highs above 58 dollars the previous day on supply worries.
New York's main contract, light sweet crude for May delivery, edged down four cents to 57.05 dollars per barrel in early deals.
The contract had struck a record intra-day high point of 58.28 dollars on Monday amid worries over US refining capacity and the continued fallout from a study that indicated prices could hit 100 dollars, analysts said.
But it fell late in the day to end 26 cents lower at 57.01 dollars.
The price of Brent North Sea crude oil for delivery in May fell three cents to 56.20 dollars per barrel after striking 57 dollars for the first time a day earlier.
Brent had peaked at 57.65 dollars per barrel before closing at 56.23 dollars on Monday.
"It's profit-taking, nothing more than that," Investec analyst Bruce Evers said, explaining weaker prices on Tuesday.
"Prices have been very, very strong over the last 10 days, and they need a bit of a pull-back every once in a while," he added.
In an effort to calm prices, OPEC president Sheikh Ahmed Fahd al-Sabah said Monday that the cartel had begun consultations to consider raising output by 500,000 barrels per day (bpd) and expected a decision within two weeks.
"The OPEC comments have taken prices off the boil," Bache Financial broker Christopher Bellew said.
At its last meeting in Iran on March 16, OPEC increased output by 500,000 bpd to 27.5 million bpd.
Some analysts said the recent price spike was unlikely to be sustained as it was mainly driven by a Goldman Sachs report last week predicting oil prices could reach up to 105 dollars a barrel.
"It is always questionable how sustained a price move will be when driven by someone's forecast rather than hard data," London-based consultancy Capital Economics said in a research note.
"Markets are reacting to a scare story, and building speculative positions whilst ignoring the hard data. We do not regard this as sustainable."
Oil prices also have been underpinned by worries about a lack of US refining capacity to turn crude into gasoline, or petrol, in time for the start next month of the summer holiday driving season in the United States, when Americans hit the open roads in their cars.
Meanwhile, traders keenly awaited Wednesday's weekly snapshot of crude inventories from the United States' Department of Energy.
04/05/2005 17:03 GMT