Oil prices fell on Wednesday after hitting a near two-and-a-half year high in the previous session, as analysts said the rally was gradually running out of steam despite supply outages in Libya and the North Sea.
U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures fell 53 cents to $59.44 U.S. a barrel by noon Eastern on Wednesday. WTI broke through $60.00 a barrel for the first time since June 2015 in the previous session.
Brent crude futures were down 73 cents at $66.29 U.S. a barrel after breaking through $67 for the first time since May 2015 the previous day.
On Tuesday, Libya lost around 90,000 barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil supplies from a blast on a pipeline feeding Es Sider port.
A Libyan state oil firm official said pipeline repair of the pipeline could take about one week but will not have a major impact on exports.
The Libyan outage added to supply disruptions of recent weeks, which also included the closure of Britain's largest Forties pipeline.
On Wednesday, Forties was pumping at half its normal capacity and its operator was pledging to resume full flows in early January.
The Forties and Libyan outages, which together amount to around 500,000 bpd, are relatively small in a global context of both production and demand approaching 100 million bpd.
