Crude oil prices top $53 for fourth successive record high

Oil prices hit another record yesterday, trading as high as $53.40 (€43) a barrel on supply worries ahead of a planned oil worker strike in Nigeria and delays in post-Hurricane Ivan US output recovery efforts.

US light crude settled at $53.31 a barrel, up 64 cents, the fourth day in a row prices set all-time highs on the New York Mercantile Exchange. London Brent set a record at $49.75 a barrel before easing slightly to close at $49.71, up 81 cents on the day.

Traders said Brent was boosted by gas oil futures, which rose amid worries over shortages of heating oil ahead of peak northern winter demand.

In OPEC member Nigeria, a two-day wildcat strike by oil workers at Royal Dutch Shell - which had bolstered prices this week - ended without affecting exports.

But the world's seventh largest crude exporter faces a much more damaging general strike Monday, which may have a large impact on Nigeria's 2.3 million barrels per day of output, trade unionists and analysts said.

Strong demand growth, particularly in China, has helped oil surge 60 per cent this year, drawing OPEC to pump at a 25-year high and leaving little margin for supply disruptions or refinery outages.

"Demand growth is outstripping supply growth and there's very little prospect for that to change," said Mr Rus Newton of commodities hedge fund manager Global Advisors. "Prospects of maintaining supply growth at current levels are extremely limited."

Stretched supplies have been stressed by the lingering loss of US production from the Gulf of Mexico where around 475,000 barrels per day remains out of commission three weeks after Hurricane Ivan hit the region.

Oil major BP, which operates nearly half of the lost output, said it did not expect to restore full flows until the end of this month.

This outage, coupled with last month's refinery closures during the hurricane, have hindered efforts to build US heating oil inventories ahead of the winter, when demand for the fuel peaks in the US northeast.

Tight inventories have magnified concerns over the impact of any disruptions to international supplies.

Production is also being curtailed in Norway by a rig workers' strike that unions say will widen at the weekend to shut in 55,000 bpd of the nation's three million bpd. - (Reuters)