The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC)'s weekly average crude oil price dropped 3.61 U.S. dollars to 59.53 dollars per barrel last week, the cartel's secretariat said on Monday.

Friday saw the lowest rate, 58.44 U.S. dollars per barrel, being recorded since the beginning of April, with OPEC's oil prices consecutively dropping each week for the last five weeks.

Market analysts believed that international crude oil prices would keep dropping over the short term due to the easing of the tension between Iran and European Union (EU), the end of the gasoline demand peak, and the high-level fuel oil stock for the winter in the United States.

Furthermore, OPEC's decision to maintain its current output and the predicted drop in the world oil demand would help to push the oil price even lower.

In the OPEC monthly oil market report of September, the cartel revised down world oil demand growth by 0.1 million barrels per day (mb/d) to 84.40 mb/d in 2006, 1.2 million barrels more than last year.

Source: Xinhua