After touching another record high Monday, crude oil prices fell on expectations of a rise in US distillate supplies.

On the New York Mercantile Exchange, light, sweet crude oil futures for July delivery fell 47 cents to end at $58.90 a barrel. Intra-day prices hit $59.70 a barrel, the highest price since the contract was introduced in 1983.

Meanwhile, in London the August Brent crude-oil futures contract shed 82 cents to finish at $57.50 per barrel on the International Petroleum Exchange.

On Tuesday oil futures fell after a Bloomberg report which quoted 12 analysts as saying that US supplies of distillate due Tuesday were expected to rise. Distillate includes diesel and heating oil.

Prices also fell after media reports that Norway was likely to step in to prevent a strike by oil workers there.

Meanwhile, a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based research firm said that oil producers would boost supplies fast enough to meet demand growth over the next five years and "take the pressure off prices around 2007 to 2008 or thereafter and even lead to a period of price weakness."