By Christopher Alessi and Amrith Ramkumar 

-- Oil prices fell Tuesday, pausing a recent recovery on fresh worries that slower global economic growth will lead to lower fuel consumption.

-- Brent crude, the global oil benchmark, fell 2% to $61.51 a barrel on London's Intercontinental Exchange. Prices are up more than 20% from their Dec. 24 16-month low but still nearly 30% below their Oct. 3 multiyear high.

-- West Texas Intermediate futures, the U.S. oil standard, dipped 2.1% to $52.68 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. They have also risen sharply alongside stocks and other risk assets since Christmas Eve but, like Brent prices, remain well off their nearly four-year highs from October.

HIGHLIGHTS

Demand Fears: The International Monetary Fund on Monday cut its forecast for world economic growth in 2019 to 3.5%, compared with 3.7% in October. The fund's managing director, Christine Lagarde, warned the "risk of a sharper decline in global growth has certainly increased."

Ms. Lagarde's comments at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, came as China -- the world's second-largest economy and biggest importer of crude -- reported economic growth had slowed to its lowest rate in nearly three decades, at 6.6% in 2018.

"Whether it is the renewed focus on China's issues, the cautious voices out of Davos, with the IMF recently having downgraded its global 2019 GDP forecast to a three year low of 3.5%, the complicated Brexit process or the general flow over the last few days of bearish analyst pieces on the equity side of things, there are clearly enough reasons to not get carried away by the latest [oil] rally," analysts at consulting firm JBC Energy wrote in a note Tuesday.

Worries about the global economy amid trade tensions and higher interest rates have stoked volatility across asset classes in recent months, fueling fears that demand for a range of commodities and products will fall. Oil's Tuesday dip came with stocks and other commodities also dropping.

INSIGHT

OPEC+: Oil prices have overall been bolstered during the first month of the year by the implementation of production curbs by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies outside the cartel.

OPEC and 10 partner producers, led by Russia, agreed in early December to collectively hold back crude output by 1.2 million barrels a day for the first six months of 2019. The move was part of an effort to rein in a burgeoning supply glut and boost prices, which had plunged by about 40% in the fourth quarter of last year.

OPEC's commitment to the cuts was given more credibility last week after the International Energy Agency reported that the cartel's output came down by 590,000 barrels a day just last month -- driven largely by the organization's de facto leader, Saudi Arabia. However, Russian crude and condensate production climbed by 80,000 barrels a day last month to a record high, the agency said in its monthly oil-market report.

Russia and Saudi Arabia are the world's two largest oil producers behind the U.S., which took the top spot over the past year as a result of robust shale-oil growth.

AHEAD

-- The U.S. Energy Information Administration is set to release its monthly drilling-productivity report later Tuesday.

-- The American Petroleum Institute, an industry group, releases weekly data on U.S. oil inventories Wednesday, followed by official government data from the EIA on Thursday.

Write to Christopher Alessi at christopher.alessi@wsj.com and Amrith Ramkumar at amrith.ramkumar@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

January 22, 2019 10:07 ET (15:07 GMT)