Oil prices ended lower on Monday, after hitting their highest in nearly nine months on Friday, in response to a likely increase in crude supply in the coming months.

At the same time, demand remains weighed down by the pandemic.

A barrel of Brent North Sea oil for February delivery was down 0.93% or 46 cents from Friday's close at $48.79.

Brent had approached the symbolic bar of 50 dollars a barrel on Friday, at 49.92 dollars, which has not been crossed since March 6.

In New York, the US barrel of WTI for the month of January dropped 1.08% or 50 cents, ending at 45.76 dollars, after reaching 46.68 dollars on Friday, a first since March 5.

“The fall in oil prices this morning is a perfect example of a correction after a series of news that pushed the market too high” last week, commented Bjornar Tonhaugen, analyst at Rystad.

The supply of black gold being set to increase in the near future, this dampens the momentum of the past week, according to him.

“The number of oil rigs increasing each week in the United States, Libyan production which is slowly increasing towards its full potential and that of Iran which is preparing to restart during the first quarter of 2021” are all bearish factors, he explained in a note.

Supply from members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) plus ten producer allies, identified by the acronym OPEC+, is also expected to rise from January 1.

The difficult negotiations on the post-Brexit relationship between the European Union and the United Kingdom caused a fall in the pound sterling. "It weighed on oil early in the session," noted Phil Flynn of Price Futures Group.

Despite the prospects dangled for demand by the massive vaccination campaigns against Covid-19, the current situation remains worrying.

The United States, for example, continues to record a very high number of daily coronavirus contaminations: the country most heavily affected by the epidemic (more than 282,000 dead) recorded for the day of Sunday some 181,000 new cases and 1,110 deaths. linked to the coronavirus, according to figures from Johns Hopkins University.