Oil prices retreat after hitting high

Oil prices fell sharply Tuesday after briefly surpassing $54 a barrel amid nagging concerns in the market that the global supply buffer is too thin to handle a significant output disruption.

Light sweet crude for November delivery sank $1.13 to $52.51 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange after rising as high as $54.45 earlier in the day. Nymex oil futures settled Monday at a record $53.64 per barrel.

“You can’t go up every day. Eventually you have to have some kind of correction,” said Tom Bentz, a trader at BNP Paribas Futures in New York.

Retail gas prices, meanwhile, rose for the fourth straight week to an average of $1.99 per gallon, the Energy Department reported Tuesday. Average nationwide prices peaked at $2.06 a gallon during the week ending May 22.

Even with Tuesday’s decline, crude futures are up nearly 20 percent over the past month, in large part because petroleum production in the Gulf of Mexico remains hindered by hurricane damage to pipelines and production platforms.