Oil prices fell back from the $60-a-barrel mark Monday as the market anticipated a supply surplus in the second quarter and following a suggestion that OPEC is unlikely to further cut production.

On Friday, prices climbed briefly above the psychological $60 barrier on unrelenting cold U.S. weather.


But light, sweet crude for March delivery was down 84 cents to $59.05 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange by afternoon in Europe. Brent crude for March dropped $1.13 to $57.88 a barrel at London's ICE Futures exchange.

The biggest market driver in recent weeks has been the weather, which has depleted U.S. supplies of distillate fuels, which include heating oil, by the largest amount since December 2005. With temperatures still below normal across the Northeast United States, which consumes 80 percent of the nation's heating oil, traders are bracing for the U.S. government inventory data on Wednesday to show an even bigger decrease.


Heating oil was down 3.26 cents to $1.6925 a gallon on the Nymex, and natural gas fell 40.7 cents to $7.420 per 1,000 cubic feet.
Natural gas, the more popular form of home heating in the United States, had risen more than 60 percent over the past month on the recent cold weather.