LONDON - World oil prices fell on Wednesday as traders anticipated weekly data to reveal further rises in US crude inventories and deemed as "bearish" a study by the International Energy Agency that nevertheless forecast higher demand for energy.
New York's main contract, light sweet crude for delivery in June, dropped 65 cents to 51.42 dollars per barrel in electronic deals.
In London, the price of Brent North Sea crude oil for delivery in June lost 54 cents to 50.89 dollars per barrel.
The US Department of Energy (DoE) was due to publish its weekly snapshot of crude and gasoline inventory figures later Wednesday.
Victor Shum, an analyst at US energy consultancy firm Purvin and Gertz in Singapore, said the market was anticipating a strong rise in US energy stockpiles.
"The general market expectation is that crude stocks will continue to go up," said Shum, noting that US stockpiles were already at their highest levels in six years.
Analysts from France-based commodity brokerage firm Fimat predicted US crude stocks would show a rise of two million barrels over the past week, with gasoline reserves rising 800,000 barrels and distillates 350,000.
Meanwhile global oil demand this year was set to be slightly higher than previously expected, as the market readjusted from last year's demand surge, the International Energy Agency said Wednesday.
Oil demand was now seen rising by 2.2 percent this year to 84.3 million barrels per day, the IEA calculated, revising up by 0.1 percentage points its April forecast.
"The oil market is still rebalancing from last year's demand surge," the IEA judged.
It said that demand pressures in China and the United States had continued to ease, and that it had revised downwards its estimate of demand in Europe, but consumption in some other regions had risen.
"Prices have continued to fall... as the market has taken the latest IEA Monthly Oil Report bearishly," Barclays Capital analyst Kevin Norrish said.
"Attention has focused on downward revisions to Chinese, US and European oil demand growth during the first two quarters of 2005," he added.
On the supply side, the IEA said that supplies had risen by 0.435 million barrels per day in April from the March figure to 84.5 million barrels per day.
Members of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries had meanwhile increased their output by 480,000 barrels per day to 29.4 million barrels, it added.

05/11/2005 11:49 GMT