* Oil bounces off three-month low, above $119 a barrel
* Turkey pipeline blast helps support prices
* White House says punitive measure needed against Iran
(Updates prices, adds comment)
By Santosh Menon
LONDON, Aug 6 (Reuters) - Oil steadied near $119 a barrel on
Wednesday but not far off a three-month low hit due to concerns
that demand will suffer from an economic slowdown, as the market
awaited data expected to show a rise in U.S. crude inventories.
An explosion on a key oil pipeline in eastern Turkey late on
Tuesday provided a bullish backdrop, adding to Nigerian supply
concerns and the threat of disruptions from Iran should its
standoff with the West worsen.
U.S. light crude <CLc1> was 12 cents up at $119.29 a barrel
by 1325 GMT, recovering from lows of $118.10 hit earlier in the
session.
London Brent crude was 9 cents higher at $117.79 a barrel,
off highs of $118.73 hit on news that authorities had halted oil
flows along the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline following an
explosion.
Oil has fallen almost $30 from its mid-July peak of $147.27
a barrel -- a drop of nearly 20 percent -- amid growing evidence
that high prices had finally started to take a toll on demand,
although many in the market say its six-year bull run is not
over and has further to go.
"Prices will remain on the downward trend, but I don't think
they will fall that much, but be rangebound around $118-$120 a
barrel," said Gerard Rigby of Fuel First Consulting in Sydney.
A broker in London, who asked not to be named, said market
participants expected that a close below $116 would set the
stage for further declines.
"I would not be at all surprised if it goes below $116 in
the short term, but there is plenty out there that could push it
back up again," he said.
FOCUS ON U.S. INVENTORIES
Attention turned to the U.S. government's weekly inventories
data, due out later on Wednesday and expected to show a rise in
crude and distillate stocks alongside a drop in gasoline stocks.
A Reuters poll of analysts forecast a 300,000-barrel rise in
crude inventories, a 2.1 million-barrel increase in distillates,
and a 1.2 million barrel draw in gasoline stocks.
[]
In the United States, Tropical Storm Edouard, the fifth of
the 2008 Atlantic hurricane season, hit the Texas coast without
causing any major disruptions to U.S. energy operations, which
also helped to squash concerns and bring prices down.
The storm caused minor oil and natural gas outages as it
passed through the U.S. Gulf of Mexico, and companies began to
fly evacuated staff back to rigs. []
Traders kept a watchful eye on news about OPEC member Iran,
the world's fourth biggest oil producer, which remains locked in
a tense standoff with the West, notably the United States, over
its nuclear programme.
Iran says it is only seeking to master nuclear technology to
generate electricity and has repeatedly refused to halt its
atomic work, prompting the U.N. Security Council to impose three
rounds of penalties on Tehran since 2006.
The White House on Wednesday said it believed western powers
would have to take further measures against Iran "that would be
punitive", citing a lack of a concrete response from Tehran to a
demand that it freezes its nuclear activities.
(Additional reporting by Seng Li Peng in Singapore and Barbara
Lewis in London; editing by Anthony Barker)
