Oil drops to around $123 a barrel before closing flat on Nymex: My Prediction on Crude Oil, a couple of months back is gradually coming to be true:

The markets are anticipating the International Crude Oil price to break the last visible strong support at $120 per barrel, within a short time; the cracks are already visible in the fragile Crude Oil Price charts of Nymex:

However, the threats to supply, which traders have fretted over for months, remain:

Oil prices sank to their lowest point in weeks on Friday as investors questioned whether crude has cooled enough to reflect a serious deterioration in demand.

Light, sweet crude for September delivery fell $2.23 to settle at $123.26 a barrel in on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Earlier the contract dropped as far as $122.50, its lowest point since June 5.

In London, September Brent crude fell 97 cents to settle at $124.52 a barrel on the ICE Futures exchange.Oil traders managed to post a gain of $1.05 a barrel on Thursday, but analysts say the market's momentum points to further declines.

The magnitude of the past two weeks' sell-off is stark. Crude has fallen in seven of the last nine sessions, and was down more than 16 percent from its peak above $147 a barrel earlier this month. Still, prices remain about 65 percent higher than they were this time last year.

''There's just nothing sufficiently bullish coming into the market right now to sustain a rally,'' said Jim Ritterbusch, president of energy consultancy Ritterbusch and Associates. ''We're just seeing a new theme in which demand has become a very important part of the equation.''