SINGAPORE (Dec 8): Malaysian palm oil slid 1.9 percent on Tuesday, suffering its biggest decline in more than three weeks and snapping three sessions of gains as weakness in rival soyoil and crude oil futures weighed on the market.

Soybean oil slid 2.6 percent on Monday on expectations of large supplies from Argentina hitting the market, while crude oil tumbled to its lowest in nearly seven years as producers failed to address a growing supply
glut.
    
The benchmark palm oil contract on the Bursa Malaysia Derivatives Exchange lost 45 ringgit to 2,391 ringgit ($561) a tonne by the end of the morning session. The market climbed to its highest since Oct. 6 at 2,438 ringgit in the previous session.

Traded volume stood at 22,497 lots of 25 tonnes each by the end of the morning session.

"Palm oil market is being purely influenced by external markets," said one Kuala Lumpur-based trader. "We have seen big losses in crude oil and soybean oil futures."

The market is awaiting a monthly report on production, stocks and exports from the Malaysian Palm Oil Board due on December 10 after 0430 GMT.

Malaysian November palm stocks likely topped a previously reached near-15-year high on slowing exports, despite output falling in line with a year-end seasonal trend, a Reuters pollshowed.

Inventories in the world's second-largest producer remained high on a carry-over from the month before and weaker export demand, leading November's end-stocks to slightly rise 0.1 percent to 2.84 million tonnes from October, according to a median estimate from a survey of 10 planters, traders and refiners.

"The market is talking about high stocks but we are looking at a big drop in production going forward as we move into the peak of monsoon season," a second trader said.

Palm oil may break a support at 2,396 ringgit per tonne, and fall to the next support at 2,370 ringgit, as indicated by a rising channel and a Fibonacci retracement analysis, Wang Tao,

Reuters analyst for commodities and energy technicals said in a
report.

The decline in prices was limited by strong demand from China. The country's imports of edible oils picked up in November to 580,000 tonnes, up 21 percent from October.

China bought 7.39 million tonnes of soybeans in November, a rise of 22.6 percent from a year ago as crushers increased production to meet seasonal demand, official customs data showed
on Tuesday.

Crude prices remained near 7-year lows on Tuesday as OPEC continues to pump near record oil to defend market share, compounding a glut that has seen hundreds of thousands of barrels produced every day in excess of demand.