Oil prices held steady just below record highs today, taking some relief from efforts to keep nearly half of Alaska's Prudhoe Bay oilfield's output flowing.
London Brent crude, which hit a new high of $78.65 a barrel before succumbing to profit-taking yesterday, was trading up 10 cents at $77.65 a barrel.
After soaring 3 per cent on Monday following news that BP was shutting down Prudhoe Bay due to a corroded pipeline, prices have eased amid hope that some output from the biggest oilfield in the United States could be maintained.
US Energy Secretary Sam Bodman said BP may be able to keep up to half of Prudhoe Bay production online during work, helping offset fears that the loss of 8 per cent of US production could last for months, adding to outages in Nigeria and Iraq.
BP, which had shut half of the field's production by yesterday, said it was talking with regulators about ways to keep pumping from the western side of the field, which produces 185,000 barrels per day, while it replaces pipelines.
The US government said Saudi Arabia and Mexico had pledged to help meet any supply shortfalls, but also warned that full production from Prudhoe Bay might not resume until January. Given the regulatory scrutiny BP is facing - it is being investigated for an Alaskan spill in March - and the logistical challenges in buying new pipelines and installing them in the harsh north, some analysts still feared a prolonged outage.
Oil prices have soared 25 per cent to new highs this year on a combination of feared outages stemming from Iran's determination to pursue a nuclear programme and the ongoing war between Israel and Hizbullah, plus the very real loss of some 700,000 bpd of Nigerian production and Iraq's erratic northern exports.
Relatively healthy global crude oil inventories have provided a cushion for disruptions, but there are signs that missing supplies - coupled with a cut-back in Saudi exports since the first quarter - may be gradually eroding that surplus.
US commercial stocks were expected to have fallen by 800,000 barrels last week, with gasoline stocks off 1.1 million barrels as demand appeared unperturbed by near-record-high pump prices. US government inventory data was due out later today.
Another anxiety for the market is the US hurricane season, which continues until around November. Hurricanes last year temporarily knocked out a quarter of US crude and fuel production and sent prices to what were then record highs.