NEW YORK–The price of oil slid by near­ly US$1 a bar­rel yes­ter­day as the In­ter­na­tion­al En­er­gy Agency raised its fore­cast for US oil pro­duc­tion while cut­ting its pre­dic­tion for glob­al crude de­mand.

Bench­mark oil for June de­liv­ery dropped 96 cents to close at US$94.21 a bar­rel on the New York Mer­can­tile Ex­change. Oil has de­clined US$2.41 a bar­rel over the last four trad­ing ses­sions. The loss came af­ter the Paris-based IEA, which ad­vis­es 28 coun­tries about en­er­gy is­sues, said ris­ing US oil out­put will be the key source of new sup­plies over the com­ing five-year pe­ri­od.

"The sup­ply shock cre­at­ed by a surge in North Amer­i­can oil pro­duc­tion will be as trans­for­ma­tive to the mar­ket over the next five years as was the rise of Chi­nese de­mand over the last 15," the IEA said in its in its medi­um-term mar­ket re­port.While not­ing risks such as the ef­fects of the Arab Spring on in­vest­ment and ca­pac­i­ty growth in the North African and Mid­dle East oil in­dus­tries, the IEA said it ex­pect­ed "a more com­fort­able glob­al oil sup­ply/de­mand bal­ance" in the next five years.