Oil held steady today at about $99 a barrel after falling yesterday on profit-taking from a record rally.
US light crude for February delivery rose 11 cents to $99.29 a barrel in electronic trading earlier this morning but settled down 44 cents at $99.18 a barrel yesterday, after hitting a new lifetime high of $100.09 earlier in the day. London Brent crude rose 30 cents to $97.90.
"With the circus surrounding the breaching of $100 due to move out of town soon, the market is now likely to enter something of a quieter period of consolidation, before next month's pivotal Opec meeting," said Paul Horsnell from Barclays Capital Research.
Oil's march past the $100 mark yesterday came after the US Energy Information Administration reported that crude stocks fell four million barrels last week to a three-year low, while heating oil supplies fell by 1.4 million barrels to 38.4 million barrels - the eighth consecutive week of decline.
Crude stocks in the United States, the world's top energy consumer, have dropped more than 25 million barrels, or nearly 8 per cent, since early November as imports slowed down and shipments were hindered by bad weather on the Gulf Coast.