day shut down. Traders said crude speculators on the New York Mercantile Exchange were offloading positions, hitting prices. "I think the market cannot sustain prices above $60 without a serious supply disruption such as a hurricane or a refinery outage," said Mike Wittner, head of energy market analysis at Calyon. "As the market tries to rise above $60, there will be profit-taking, which we have seen periodically," he added. World demand has been remarkably resilient to high prices in recent years but now evidence seems to be building that Chinese demand growth is lending less support to oil markets. Analysts said signs the world's second biggest energy consumer and one of the main drivers of last year's oil price rally is seeing a sustained slowdown in oil demand growth could be key for the direction of prices. --More 2240 Local Time 1940 GMT