London: Oil fell for a third day yesterday ahead of the restart of a key North American pipeline that will restore crude supplies to U.S. refiners.

US regulators will allow the 670,000-barrel-per-day (bpd) Enbridge pipeline, which carries oil from Canada to the American heartland, to reopen today following repairs after a one-week closure, pipeline company Enbridge Inc said.

US crude futures for October, also known as WTI, fell to a low of $75 a barrel before recovering to around $75.11, down 91 cents, by 0936 GMT. The contract hit a one-month high above $78 on Monday on concerns over the Enbridge outage.

The reopening of the pipeline will remove a major support for prices, which some traders believe could now slip lower.

"WTI will have to find something new to retest the recent highs at $78 per barrel," said Olivier Jakob, managing director of consultants Petromatrix in Zug, Switzerland.

Edward Meir, senior commodity analyst at brokers MF Global, said the risk of hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico could provide some support for a while but this threat would soon disappear.

"For the time being, WTI prices should continue trading within the $70-$80 range, but as we exit the hurricane season, defending downside support at $70 will become an increasingly difficult proposition," Meir said.

The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), which oversees US pipelines, had yet to confirm the approval after Enbridge Inc completed repairs on Line 6A, following a leak in Romeoville, Illinois, that forced the duct to close nearly a week ago.

"We have consulted with PHMSA and agreed to a restart date of Friday," Enbridge spokeswoman Terri Larson said on Wednesday.

Line 6A is the main artery of Enbridge's Lakehead Pipeline System, the backbone of US oil imports from top supplier Canada. The line supplies refineries with a combined capacity of more than 1 million barrels per day in the Chicago area and connects with a spur that reaches a key storage hub in Cushing, Oklahoma.

The 670,000-barrel-per-day pipeline's September 9 shutdown raised expectations that high inventories at the Cushing pricing hub for the US crude benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI) would drain, bringing WTI prices more in line with strong values for European marker Brent.

But drops last week in petroleum stockpiles held by the US, the world's top oil consumer, did little to allay surplus concerns, even as the drawdown may have continued this week because of the pipeline closure. "Maybe stockpiles will be reduced by a little bit, but they will still have oversupply," Kwek said.

US crude oil inventories dropped last week by 2.49 million barrels to 357.37 million barrels, in line with expectations, and product stocks fell, too, according to a weekly report from the Energy Information Administration on Wednesday.

Crude inventories at Cushing fell 581,000 to 34.95 million barrels.

"With the latest Norwegian production statistics revealing a year-on-year fall in output in August of 417,000 barrels per day, the heaviest fall in any month in more than three years, it is not difficult to find a set of reasons why the Brent market should be considerably tighter than that of WTI," Barclays Capital analysts said in a report.