Oil falls away from multi-year highs on surge in U.S. drilling, Iran sanctions opposition

By Henning Gloystein

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Oil prices on Monday fell away from last week's multi-year highs as a relentless rise in U.S. drilling activity pointed to increased output, while resistance emerged in Europe and Asia to U.S. sanctions against major crude exporter Iran.

Brent crude futures were at $76.79 per barrel at 0648 GMT, down 33 cents, or 0.4 percent, from their last close.

U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures were at $70.44 a barrel, down 26 cents, or 0.3 percent.

Brent and WTI last week reached their highest since November 2014 at $78 and $71.89 per barrel respectively, as markets expect Iran's oil exports to fall significantly once U.S. sanctions bite later this year.

"Around a million barrels of oil a day is likely to disappear from global oil markets if the U.S. sanctions on Iran bite," said Greg McKenna, chief market strategist at futures brokerage AxiTrader.

"But it is still far from certain that they will bite in the way intended ... Germany has said it will protect its companies from U.S. sanctions, Iran has said French oil giant Total has yet to pull out of its fields and all the while it seems the Chinese are ready to fill the void created by the U.S.," he said

Beyond U.S. sanctions, the high oil prices come amid an already tight oil market due to record Asian demand and voluntary output restraint aimed at propping up oil prices led by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), as well as a group of non-OPEC producers including Russia.

"The (recent) surge in oil prices has been due to a number of factors including strong global economic growth, a falling dollar, an agreement between OPEC and Russia to limit production, economic collapse in Venezuela cutting their production, and bottlenecks in getting U.S. shale oil to market," said David Kelly, chief global strategist at J.P. Morgan Asset Management.

Frederic Neumann, HSBC's co-head of Asia Economics Research, said on Monday that "for a region that imports most of its needs, that (high oil prices) will prove costly."

On Monday, however, markets were held in check by a rise in U.S. drilling for new oil production.

U.S. drillers added 10 oil rigs in the week to May 11, bringing the total count to 844, the highest level since March 2015, energy services firm Baker Hughes said on Friday.

"Soaring U.S. shale output will continue to put a cap on prices," said Hussein Sayed, chief market strategist at futures brokerage FXTM.

(Reporting by Henning Gloystein; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell and Joseph Radford)