By Alejandro Barbajosa SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Brent crude plunged to a six-month trough below $99 a barrel on Tuesday in a two-session drop of nearly $10, after a U.S. credit downgrade intensified fears about a global slowdown in demand for energy. Brent crude fell as much as $5 to $98.74 a barrel, the lowest intraday price since Feb. 8. It recovered to $101.48 by 0516 GMT, but was still more than $25 off an April peak above $127. U.S. crude fell $3 to $78.31, after touching $75.71, its lowest since September 2010. An 18 percent drop in U.S. crude prices so far this month may spur OPEC into action, said Tony Nunan, a risk manager with Tokyo-based Mitsubishi Corp. Top oil exporter Saudi Arabia has raised output to near 10 million barrels per day (bpd) to ease the pressure of high energy costs on a fragile economic recovery. "Everybody is fearing a double-dip recession now," Nunan said. "Once we start getting to the mid $70s, we may have Saudi Arabia re-think its production increase." "When the market starts to get through important technical points, everybody starts selling," Nunan said, adding that Fibonacci chart analysis shows the next support level for U.S. crude is at $73.61, the 50 percent retracement of the increase from a 2008 low of $32.40 to this year's peak at $114.83. Brent on Monday broke below the key 200-day moving average, extending a correction that has taken about 20 percent off prices from their April peak. The plunge of more than 7 percent over the past two days has taken prices below the comfort zone for some of the more hawkish members of the Organization of the Petroleum Countries, who opposed the unilateral Saudi output increase. OPEC ministers will meet if prices continue to fall, Iran's OPEC governor, Mohammad Ali Khatibi, said on the Oil Ministry news website SHANA on Friday, when Brent was trading around $110. "I'm surprised how far it has fallen in all markets," said Jeremy Friesen, a Hong Kong-based commodity strategist at Societe Generale. "Demand hasn't pulled back in the past day, it's just speculation that it will, but as precipitously as markets are falling, we don't have time to wait for economic data." "There are some serious risks to the global economy, so there will be expectations that policymakers will be aggressive in shoring up confidence." Investors await the Federal Open Market Committee meeting on Tuesday for clues to whether the U.S. central bank might ease monetary policy further. "The U.S. is in a weaker position now" than in 2008, Mitsubishi's Nunan said. "If we go into recession, we have less tools. The Fed has already shot its bullets." Asian stock markets plunged on Tuesday and the Swiss franc held near a record high as investors dumped riskier assets in a global rout triggered by fears that political leaders are failing to tackle debt crises in Europe and the U.S. Major indexes across the region fell between 2 and 7 percent, following a drop of more than 6 percent on Wall Street in the first trading session since the historic downgrade of the United States' AAA credit rating by Standard & Poor's. U.S. President Barack Obama on Monday called for urgent action on the budget deficit, but his proposal on taxes was promptly rebuffed by Republicans. The G7 finance ministers' and central bankers' pledged on Sunday to help smooth markets if needed provided little solace. The S&P downgrade added to concern about energy demand in the world's top oil consumer. U.S. gasoline demand for July fell to the lowest level since 2003, according to government data. INVENTORIES, CHINA U.S. crude oil stockpiles were forecast to have risen by 1.5 million barrels last week for a third consecutive weekly increase as releases from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve kept moving into commercial inventories, a Reuters poll showed ahead of weekly inventory data. Industry group the American Petroleum Institute will publish inventory figures later on Tuesday followed by government statistics from the Energy Information Administration on Wednesday. China's inflation rate, which analysts fear could curb the ability of the world's second-largest oil user to stimulate demand and offset a global slowdown, turned out to be higher than expected at 6.5 percent in July, its highest since June 2008. Analysts warned oil prices could fall further if a second recession takes hold, but both Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs maintained their 2012 price forecasts. "We believe that WTI crude oil prices could briefly drop to $50 under a recession scenario," Merrill Lynch said in a note on Monday, but it maintained its 2012 average forecast for U.S. crude at $102 and its forecast for Brent next year at $114. (Reporting by Alejandro Barbajosa; Editing by Michael Urquhart)

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