New York, Sept 16: Oil prices has eased back on world markets in trade driven largely by technical factors, although traders were cautious with a major hurricane churning toward the US east coast. New York's reference light sweet crude October contract lost 13 cents to 28.14 dollars per barrel in late deals.

The price of Brent North Sea crude oil for October delivery dipped 10 cents to $ 26.72 in late London trading.
Analysts said that the market is not panicking but is watching to see if hurricane Isabel has an impact on us oil supplies. "The market is continuing in its weakness, with any selling due to technical factors," said GNI trader Keith Pascall.
But though the technical picture overall looked poor, prices were unlikely to fall much further from here, said Barclays Capital analyst Kevin Norrish.

"There's been a substantial amount of fund liquidations in crude oil. They must now be running short positions," he said.

"So because of that, and because of the low levels of stocks, we shouldn't see much further downside from here and we probably look for crude prices to recover."

Hurricane Isabel was due to make landfall on Thursday on the US mid-Atlantic Coast, according to predictions by the US National Hurricane Center in Miami.
Bureau Report