LONDON (AFP) — Oil prices fell by more than a dollar Tuesday on news that output would restart in Mexico after a stoppage, but they still remained close to record highs above 92 dollars per barrel.
"The market has come up a long way very quickly and it's very vulnerable to corrections," said Bache Commodities trader Christopher Bellew.
"We've got a strange situation of everybody talking about 100-dollar oil but people are too scared to buy at these numbers."
New York's main futures contract, light sweet crude for delivery in December, shed 1.04 dollars to 92.49 dollars per barrel in morning trade.
On Monday it had hit a record high 93.80 dollars.
Brent North Sea crude for December delivery meanwhile dropped 95 cents to 89.37 dollars per barrel in early afternoon deals on Tuesday. The day before it had shot up to an historic 90.49 dollars.
Prices fell as Mexico's state oil company Pemex said it would resume 600,000 barrels per day of shut-in production.
The company was forced to suspend about a fifth of its production at the start of this week because of tropical storm fears, but now expects to recommence production by Wednesday.
Crude futures were also hit by market expectations of a rise to US energy inventories last week, traders said.
Despite Tuesday's falls, oil prices have rocketed by about 50 percent over the past year although adjusted for inflation, they remain below levels reached after the 1979 Iranian revolution.
Current prices would have to go just above 100 dollars to reach outright as well as nominal highs, according to calculations by economists.
Elsewhere, OPEC's "basket" price of crude oil, based on production in 12 different countries, has risen above 85 dollars a barrel for the first time, the cartel said Tuesday.
The daily basket price jumped 1.04 dollars Monday to hit 85.84 dollars, OPEC said in a statement.
The basket price, which is always published with a 24-hour delay, serves as the reference price for output policies of the Organization of Oil Exporting Countries.
OPEC, which has said that record prices reflect speculative activity in a basically well-supplied market, is due to boost output officially by 500,000 barrels per day from Thursday.
World oil prices had struck record peaks on Monday as news about cutbacks to Mexican production came on top of already serious tensions in the Middle East.
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