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New York - Oil prices slipped on Thursday local time, extending losses recently, amid continued doubts about the speed of recovery from the recession and signs of slower energy demand.

The main futures contract, New York, light sweet crude for January, dropped 13 cents to close at 70.54 dollars per barrel, low levels last seen in early October.

In intraday trading, the contract had shrunk below 70 dollars.

In London, oil, Brent North Sea crude for January delivery fell 53 cents to settle at 71.86 dollars per barrel.

New York contract has shed nearly eight dollars, or 10 percent of the value, the decline in seven sessions, respectively.

Trade of New York are very careful with the background of mixed macro-economic reports, including the shrinking U.S. trade gap, the Italian who came out of recession and debt crisis in Dubai and Greece.

Jason Schenker of Prestige Economics said that traders feel the stiffness for recovery from the worst recession in decades.

"Market participants are likely to come slowly to the realization that the true recovery will take many years," he said.

Dollars, held steady Thursday after strengthening in the last few days, do not support a small increase in the price of futures contracts in the opening New York trading.

"The pendulum has swung the pendulum of sentiment towards pessimism," said MF Global analyst Mike Fitzpatrick, helped push oil down to 69.81 dollars during the session.

"We saw 70 dollars per barrel as a floor below which prices should not be terlintasi for a sustainable period of time," said Kevin Norrish at Barclays Capital.

Oil prices had skidded on Wednesday after official data showed a bigger increase than expected is the stock of refined petroleum products are renewed U.S. concern about sagging energy demand in the world's largest economy.

Market sentiment hit by the latest weekly report on petroleum stocks U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) which showed an unexpected increase in distillate stocks, 1.6 million barrels in the week ended December 4, not down 500,000 barrels from most analysts estimates.

Distillates including heating fuel, which typically see increased demand during this winter in the northern hemisphere.

DoE said U.S. crude reserves fell 3.8 million barrels last week, but 4.4 percent higher than their levels last year and above the upper limit of the average range for this year.

For four weeks, the average U.S. consumption of 18.5 million barrels of petroleum products a day, down 3.0 percent from the same period a year ago. (*) (ANTARA News / AFP)