Investing.com – Oil prices settled lower on as traders appeared to take profits on Monday’s rally amid reports offering clarity on the duration of the Forties pipeline shutdown.
On the New York Mercantile Exchange crude futures for January delivery fell 1.5% to settle at $57.14 a barrel, while on London's Intercontinental Exchange, Brent lost 2.1% to trade at $63.35 a barrel.
Reports on Tuesday, offering clarity on the expected downtime of the Forties pipeline forced traders to take profits on Monday’s rally in oil prices.
"We’re estimating just now between two and three weeks," Andrew Gardner, chief executive of the Ineos Forties Pipeline System said when asked how long the system was likely to be down.
The pullback in oil prices comes as investors continued to fear that the widening Brent-WTI spread would boost demand for US exports, encouraging producers to ramp up output.
Crude oil prices, however, attempted to pare losses later in the session as traders looked ahead to U.S. crude inventory data from the American Petroleum Institute on Tuesday as well as a report from EIA on Wednesday.
Analysts forecast crude inventories fell by 3.8m barrels for the week ended Dec. 9.