Crude oil prices Wednesday fell for third day on worries that fuel demand could fall after United States President, Donald Trump, doused recent optimism over China-US trade talks, at a time of rising US crude oil stockpiles.
The price of the global benchmark crude was down $1.72 to $61.38 a barrel, erasing all gains made after an attack on Saudi oil facilities sent the benchmark up around 20 per cent to $71 per barrel last week.
The price of the United States West Texas Intermediate crude dropped to $55.71 a barrel, down $1.58.
However, despite the slump in oil prices, oil majors holding cargoes of Nigerian light crude have yet to bring down prices, anticipating that outages to the output of comparable Saudi grades following the September 14 attacks on two of its main plants could still boost demand.
Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported on Wednesday that the US commercial crude oil inventories, excluding those in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, increased by 2.4 million barrels from the previous week.