Oil prices slid below $69 a barrel Wednesday, retreating after a U.S. Election Day rally, as expectations a slowing global economy will cut crude demand re-emerged as the market's dominant driver, The Associated Press reported. Even indications that OPEC was enacting its decision to take a daily 1.5 million barrels of crude from the market failed to support prices. Light, sweet crude for December delivery was down $1.97 to $68.56 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange by afternoon in Europe. The downward trend came despite a rally in Asian stock markets after Democrat Barack Obama claimed a historic victory in U.S. presidential elections. The contract overnight rose $6.62 to settle at $70.53 as the two-year U.S. presidential election campaign wrapped up. «This is partly just a correction from a very large gain yesterday,» said David Moore, commodity strategist at Commonwealth Bank of Australia in Sydney. «In the near term, worries about the international economic outlook will be really hard to overcome. The data flow is going to contain a lot of negatives that create pressure on the oil price.» Economic indicators out of the U.S. this week suggest the world's largest economy may be heading for its worst recession in decades. A Commerce Department report Tuesday said factory orders fell 2.5 percent in September from August, much worse than analysts had predicted. On Monday, U.S. manufacturers reported poor figures for October, showing the worst reading in more than a quarter century, according to the Institute for Supply Management. The slowdown, which was sparked by a credit crisis that began in the U.S. last year, shows signs of spreading across the world. Credit Suisse on Monday cut its forecast for growth in China's oil demand next year to nearly zero from 4 percent on the back of lower economic growth forecasts.
