Oil Prices in Asian Trade

SINGAPORE : Oil prices fell in Asian trade on Monday as worries over demand and the global economic recovery weighed on investor minds, analysts said.

New York’s main futures contract, light sweet crude for delivery in March, was down 31 cents to 72.58 dollars a barrel.

London’s Brent North Sea crude for March delivery dropped 32 cents to 71.14 dollars per barrel.

Investors remained concerned over demand woes even as the United States, the world’s largest energy consumer, reported Friday its economy grew at 5.7 percent in the fourth quarter, analysts said. Tony Nunan, a risk manager with Mitsubishi Corp in Tokyo, said although the numbers were good, rising inventories were due largely to restocking rather than because of a growth in consumer demand. The US Commerce Department report on gross domestic product (GDP) showed the strongest growth in six years, even though consumer spending, the traditional driver of economic activity, remained sluggish. The big GDP gains came in large part from businesses ramping up production to rebuild inventories, which economists say may skew the picture of overall activity but is a normal part of recovery. Inventories accounted for 3.39 percentage points of GDP.

“The oil market is still concerned about the high (oil) inventories and the economic recovery,” Nunan said.

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