London stocks opened slightly lower this morning, hit by weak oil stocks.
The FTSE 100 was down 20.9 points at 5,850 earlier this morning as it slipped back from Monday's rise, which saw the index of Britain's biggest shares close at its highest level since August 4th.
Energy stocks accounted for a large chunk of the FTSE's fall as oil prices slipped towards $73 a barrel on a fragile truce between Israel and Lebanon and as oil kept flowing from North America's largest field. BP and Royal Dutch Shell slipped about 0.5 per cent each.
Miners also eased, with Rio Tinto, Antofagasta, Vedanta and Xstrata all down about 1 per cent.
However, drug maker Shire Pharmaceuticals climbed higher after a deal to stop the launch of a generic version of one of Shire's treatments.
Shares in the group jumped 6 per cent as Shire said it had settled pending litigation with rival Barr Pharmaceuticals, stopping Barr from marketing a generic version of Shire's hyperactivity drug Adderall in the United States until 2009, except in certain circumstances.