•Global crude futures weakened again on Tuesday as further liquidation of long positions by speculative funds and comments from Iran's OPEC representative pushed the energy complex lower. "The OPEC comments have triggered the main weakness this morning," a London-based broker said.

•Javad Yarjani, the Iranian OPEC representative, said that the cartel will look at fundamentals rather than price to determine its production. "The price is not important in the OPEC decisions. This organization, in order to make decisions, takes into account the fundamental factors such as the level of supply and demand, and the level of the storages. It does not take into consideration non-fundamental factors that have nothing to do with crude oil shortage," Shana quoted Javad Yarjani as saying.

•Meanwhile, with a lack of fresh bullish news to take prices even higher, funds continued to liquidate some of their long positions, pushing front-month futures to near a one-week low.

Updated: July 24, 2007