Oil prices fall as supply worries ...

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London (AFP) - Oil prices continued to spiral lower, hitting a near three-month low point in New York, following a rise in U.S. petroleum stockpiles and signs OPEC will refrain from announcing output cuts next week.

The price of New York's benchmark contract, light sweet crude for January delivery, lost 79 cents to 44.70 dollars a barrel in electronic trading at about 1115 GMT.

The contract had plunged by 3.64 dollars to 45.49 dollars a barrel on Wednesday, the lowest finish since September 16.

The sharp falls were triggered by a U.S. government report showing rises in inventories of crude oil, gasoline and distillates, including heating oil stocks, which are the main focus of the market as the northern winter sets in.

In London Brent North Sea crude for January lost one dollar to $41.31, after plummeting by $3.20  on Wednesday.

"Prices have really fallen a long way," said Veronica Smart, analyst at the Energy Information Centre, a consulting firm.

"We would have thought that as we are approaching winter, prices would start to edge up over concerns about the supply in the U.S., particularly for heating oil.

"But with the U.S. data yesterday being better than we anticipated as we're heading in the colder winter weather, that's obviously triggered severe losses. Fears are easing over potential shortages this winter," Smart said.

Prices were also coming under pressure from comments from members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries suggesting that the cartel was likely to postpone a cut to output quotas until next year.

OPEC ministers are due to meet in Cairo on December 10, 2004, to discuss whether to rein in production that has been boosted substantially in recent months to try to bring down record high oil prices above 50 dollars a barrel.

But the grouping's output ceiling was likely to be left unchanged at next week's meeting, said OPEC president Purnomo Yusgiantoro.

"There's this thought that during the first quarter (of 2005), prices will remain high because of geo-political problems and because our oversupply has come down to 1.0-1.5 million barrels (per day)," Yusgiantoro, who is also Indonesia's energy minister, told reporters in Jakarta.

OPEC's current production ceiling is set at 27 million barrels per day.

"We have a very high level of output from OPEC, helping supplies globally and helping prices to ease," said Smart.

Wednesday's report from the US Department of Energy showed that commercial crude oil inventories climbed 900,000 barrels to 293.3 million in the week to November 26, about average for this point of the season.

Distillates -- mostly heating oil and diesel -- soared 2.3 million barrels to 117.9 million, twice the increase predicted by analysts, although stocks remained below average for the season, the department said.

Heating oil inventories rose 1.0 million barrels to 49.9 million. Diesel stocks rose 1.4 million to 66.2 million.

"It is clear that the inventories are weighing on the market," said U.S.-based Fimat analyst Mike Fitzpatrick. He noted, however, that the distillate stocks were still 10 million barrels below last year's level.