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WORLD oil prices traded slightly lower in Asia on Tuesday after comments by the OPEC cartel and an inflow of investor money helped prices surge to near-record levels, dealers said.
In afternoon trade, New York's main oil contract, light sweet crude for delivery in May, dropped 25 cents to 108.84 dollars per barrel.
The benchmark contract closed 2.86 dollars higher at 109.09 dollars (S$150.62) on Monday in New York after touching an intra-day high of 109.48 dollars (S$151.61).
Brent North Sea crude for May fell 33 cents to 106.81 dollars a barrel, after settling at 107.14 dollars on Monday in London.
New York crude hit a record intra-day high of 111.80 dollars on March 17 on the back of a weak US dollar and choppy world financial markets.
London Brent scored a historic peak of 108.02 dollars earlier in March.
Investors 'buying into commodities' are pushing up prices, said David Johnson, an oil analyst at Macquarie Research in Hong Kong.
The market was mostly driven by sentiment, and investors were now 'nervous about shortages to some extent,' said Mr Johnson.
Over the weekend, the secretary general of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), Abdullah al-Badri, rejected calls for an increase in the cartel's crude output, saying non-fundamental factors were to blame for current high prices.
'At the moment there is enough oil in the market and no need to change OPEC's output,' he said in Teheran late on Saturday.
Eric Wittenauer at Wachovia Securities said energy prices had fresh momentum, which has brought speculative cash back into the market.
The OPEC cartel, which produces 40 per cent of global oil supplies, defiantly maintained its output at 29.67 million barrels per day at its last meeting in March. -- AFP
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