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By Gulgiz Dadashova

Crude oil prices are again at a risk of strong decline given the slowing economic growth in Asia, signs that U.S. shale drillers have adapted to lower prices and growing concerns that a glut of gasoline is due to persist despite strong summertime driving demand.

Brent crude was trading at $46.26 per barrel at 0942 GMT (5.42 a.m. ET), down 50 cents from its last settlement. While, WTI crude was down 57 cents at $44.84 a barrel on the futures market.

Both benchmarks fell to the lowest level since early May.

Traders say the lower prices set in after Asian refiners began cutting crude orders, Reuters reports. The price dip is also blamed on the region's economic slowdown.

A stronger dollar also weighed on oil prices, as the strong USD makes dollar-priced commodities like oil more expensive for those using other currencies.

Brexit further shakes global markets, including oil, as it expected to slow economic growth in Europe and the U.K. that will affect the crude demand.

There is also mounting evidence that U.S. shale drillers can adapt to prices of $45 or higher, Reuters says. U.S. oil bankruptcies "became sparse in June" and drillers have added rigs "for the fifth week in six."

China's economic growth likely cooled to a fresh seven-year low of 6.6 percent in the second quarter, according to a Reuters poll of 61 economists, its weakest in seven years.

For a sustained move in oil prices above $50, the market should see demand expectations increase, analysts say.

But, supportive to prices, the International Energy Agency (IEA) recently declared that it expects the oil market to be balanced in the second half of 2016, as the agency revised global oil demand growth forecasts upwards.

Growth in global oil demand will reach around 1.3 million barrels a day (mb/d) in 2016, the IEA said in its monthly report published in Mid June. While in 2017, it predicts "we will see the same rate of growth and global demand will reach 97.4 mb/d."

With oil demand growth rising and global oil supply easing, the IEA said that, "assuming no further surprises, in the second half of 2016 we expect the oil market to be balanced, with a small stock draw in the third quarter of 2016 offset by a small stock build in the fourth quarter of 2016."

Meanwhile, Iran has announced that the country has regained about 80 percent of the market share it held before the U.S. and European Union tightened sanctions on its oil industry in 2012, he said. Sanctions were eased in January, and Iran plans to double crude exports.

Iran exports about 2 million barrels of its daily output of 3.8 million, Mohsen Ghamsari, NIOC’s director of international affairs told Bloomberg.

Oil markets will remain stable this year even as Iran plans to keep boosting crude exports to regain the market share it lost due to sanctions, believes Ghamsari.

“Our exports peak is above 4 million barrels a day, and we have plans for that and are waiting for the right conditions,” Ghamsari said in an interview in Tehran, without elaborating on the timing for such an increase. “The market will stay on its present balance, and a return to prices below $30 a barrel is not very probable, at least in the current year.”

The Saudi energy minister and the secretary general of OPEC recently voiced that the global oil market is heading toward a balance and that prices are starting to settle, according to SPA.

Whether the market is heading to $60 a barrel or new lows is still a subject of debate among analysts.

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