Oil falls $1 after Nigeria oil strike ends

Concern that gasoline supplies might run short in the world's largest energy consumer helped drive oil prices to a nine-month high last week.

U.S. gasoline futures bucked the fall in crude futures and were little changed on Monday.

A series of refinery outages have cut U.S. gasoline supplies by 15 percent since the winter, reversing the seasonal trend to stockpile motor fuels ready for summer.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries has laid part of the blame for recent oil price spikes on U.S. motor fuel supply problems and has resisted consumer calls to pump more crude.

"Production from OPEC will stay stable," a senior OPEC delegate told Reuters on Monday. "There is no reason for now to change. On the crude side, the market is well balanced."

Refinery capacity constraints were likely to affect markets in consumer countries for some time, he added.

Crude oil speculators boosted their net long positions by more than a fifth on the New York Mercantile Exchange in the week to May 22, betting that prices would rise further. Gasoline speculators in contrast trimmed net length.

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