Oil Prices Inch Higher Before Christmas Break

Oil prices inch higher before Christmas break

NEW YORK, Dec. 23 (Xinhua) — World oil prices inched higher on Friday as traders covered their positions before a long weekend for the Christmas break.

New York’s main contract, light sweet crude for delivery in February, added 15 cents to close at 58.43 dollars a barrel.

In London, the price of Brent North Sea crude for February delivery gained 14 cents to finish at 56.69 dollars a barrel.

In light pre-holiday trading, prices had earlier been down as a pipeline fire was brought under control in Nigeria, Africa’s biggest energy producer.

Traders were keeping a watch over Nigeria, where Royal Dutch Shell said that the fire on its oil pipeline was brought under control overnight.

President Olesegun Obasanjo had Thursday declared a state of alert in the oil-rich Niger Delta after at least eight people were reported to have died in an explosion that set the pipeline ablaze on Tuesday.

Shell has said that unknown assailants attacked its pipeline near the main oil city Port Harcourt, resulting in a major spill and fire that slashed production by about seven percent of Nigeria ‘s total crude export.

World oil prices had closed lower on Thursday after US reserves of natural gas fell by less than expected during a recent cold snap, traders said.

Crude prices were catapulted to record heights this summer by hurricanes that ravaged Gulf Coast energy installations in the United States.

The recovery of U.S. oil and natural gas production from the storm-battered Gulf of Mexico continued, though 27.51 percent of the Gulf’s 1.5 million bpd of crude production remained shut in, a U.S. government report said.

Output from major non-OPEC producer Russia was forecast to rise 2.9 percent, or 270,000 bpd, in 2006 as the country has entered a period of more modest growth after impressive spikes in recent years.