LONDON, Oct 10: The price of oil fell on Thursday after Iraq invited the United States to inspect two sites where Washington suspects Baghdad of having resumed its prohibited weapons programmes.

The price of benchmark Brent North Sea crude for November delivery fell to $27.55 a barrel from $28.13 at the close of trading on Wednesday.

In New York, a barrel of reference light sweet crude for November delivery fell 64 cents to $28.71 in early deals.

GNI analyst Lawrence Eagles said: “The oil market has had a large amount of positive news recently and has failed to make fresh upside progress.”

He added that fears of equity-induced economic weakness could lead to a further retracement in Brent.

Eagles noted that the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries’ OPECNA news agency had reported on Tuesday that its basket of the average of seven crude prices had fallen below $28 per barrel for the first time in two weeks.

Opec has set a price range of $22-28 a barrel, and reserves the right under a price mechanism system to adjust output if the price remains above that range for 20 days in a row.

Eagles, who said Opec had dropped the automatic linkage to prices some time ago, believes the cartel could still consider raising output if it judged that strong demand from the United States meant physical supplies were likely to tighten still further.

Meanwhile, the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) has cut its IPE Brent-linked oil price formulas for November crude oil loadings by 35 to 50 cents a barrel, sources said on Thursday.

Western oil sales from Iran, Opec’s second biggest producer, account for around 850,000 barrels per day (bpd) of its overall exports of just over two million bpd.

Iran’s November prices for Western outlets follow, with the differentials to IPE Brent (BWAVE) in dollars per barrel and the previous price for October.

Iran Light (pvs) Iran Heavy (pvs) Foroozan (pvs) Northwest -2.55 -2.05 -3.00 -2.50 -2.85 -2.35 Europe Mediterranean -2.50 -2.10 -3.00 -2.55 -2.85 -2.40 Sidi Kerir -1.60 -1.25 -2.10 -1.70 -1.95 -1.55—AFP/Reuters