LONDON, Dec 14, 2009 (AFP) - World oil prices fell on Monday, with New York crude briefly ducking under 69 dollars per barrel, as the market came under pressure from US demand concerns, analysts said.

New York's main contract, light sweet crude for January, lost 36 cents to 69.51 dollars a barrel. It earlier fell to 68.59 dollars -- the lowest point since October 5.

Brent North Sea crude for delivery in January shed 29 cents to 69.58 dollars a barrel in midday London trading.

"Concerns that the demand for oil is not running as fast as one would have hoped has seen oil fall back from the 82-dollar level seen in October," said ODL Securities analyst Marius Paun.

Victor Shum, a Singapore-based analyst with energy consultancy Purvin and Gertz, agreed that worries over sluggish US energy demand were undermining oil.

"US demand is weak, that is adding to the weight on oil," Shum said.

The United States is the world's largest oil user but demand has been affected by the country's worst economic slump since the Great Depression.

In recent days and weeks, oil prices have been depressed due to the strengthening US currency, which makes dollar-priced oil more expensive for buyers using weaker currencies. That tends to dampen demand and prices.

"Oil is under pressure because of worries about the strength of the US dollar," added Shum.

"Although the dollar has weakened this morning, the trend over recent days was a strengthening dollar," he said.

Meanwhile, traders were turning their thoughts to the upcoming meeting of OPEC oil producers later this month.

Iraq will be a "big player" at OPEC's meeting in Angola over its allocated crude production quota following a string of deals with oil majors, a senior US embassy official said on Sunday.

The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) meeting in Luanda on December 22 will come shortly after Baghdad set ambitious output targets at a Friday-Saturday auction of Iraqi oil field contracts to foreign energy firms.

"They're going to have to negotiate with their OPEC partners on that one," the official at the embassy in Baghdad told reporters, on condition of anonymity, referring to Iraq's production aims and its OPEC quota.

"They're going to be a big player that wants to come back to the table, so they're going to have to negotiate with Saudi Arabia, Iran, Venezuela and the other OPEC members."

Iraq currently produces around 2.5 million barrels of oil per day (bpd).

But after awarding seven contracts to foreign energy firms at the auction, following three more deals sealed since a first auction in June, it aims to ramp up output to 12 million bpd within seven years.

Since economic sanctions of the Saddam Hussein era after his 1990 invasion of Kuwait, Iraq has been the only OPEC member not bound by the OPEC quota system and the cartel's overall output ceiling of 24.84 million bpd.

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Copyright AFP 2009.