هام جدا : البترول يسجل 55 $

[motab3]

لامست اسعار البترول سقف 55$ للبرميل اليوم في سوق نيويورك
وبرنت يسجل 51.85

وتوقعات لاعضاء في اوبك بوصول البترول لسعر 80$
cnnfn
Crude oil hits $55
LONDON (Reuters) - Oil prices jumped to $55 a barrel Thursday as investment fund buying and U.S. refinery outages pushed prices ever closer to last October's record high.

Light crude for April delivery jumped $1.95 to touch $55 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, giving it a gain of more than 18 percent in just over three weeks.

In London, Brent crude added 63 cents to $51.85 a barrel, within touching distance of October's record $51.94. (To check crude oil and other commodity prices, click here).

Oil's rise has been driven surging demand from China, India and other industrializing countries that has stretched production capacity. The rally in oil, copper and other raw materials has in turn attracted speculative and long-term fund managers plowing cash into the commodity markets, further fueling oil's rally.

The dollar's sharp fall last week accelerated the inflow as rising energy markets offered a place for speculators to park their cash. Meanwhile, analysts say OPEC producers want oil prices to stay high to protect their incomes. Oil is traded in dollars.

Refinery problems in the United States outweighed news of rising inventories Wednesday, propelling prices above $53 a barrel for the first time since Oct. 27 last year. Two days before that, on Oct. 25, 2004, U.S. prices hit a record trading high of $55.67.

Disruptions at Texas oil refineries included a brief outage at a gasoline unit of BP's big Texas City plant and a fire at Western Refining Co.'s refinery in El Paso.

Gasoline futures hit a record above $1.50 a gallon in New York, up about 2 cents, as traders bet that with spring coming demand for motor fuel would rise in the United States, the world's biggest energy-consuming nation.

Seasonal maintenance kept U.S. refineries running at 89.3 percent of capacity last week, the lowest rate in four months, exacerbating fears that global supplies could tighten significantly.

"With demand expected to exceed year-ago levels, even minor supply disruptions could tip the balance towards tighter stocks," Fimat Bank USA said in a report.

An unusual late cold snap across much of the East and Midwest has fed worries about rising demand and tight supplies.

"Cold weather will be around for another few weeks and that only adds to the move up," said Colin Tang, an oil trader with Calyon in Singapore.

$80 near?
Members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries now appear confident that crude oil will trade at $40 to $50 a barrel this year. Talk in OPEC of even higher prices could stir fresh speculative buying.

OPEC's acting Secretary-General said Thursday that crude could spike as high as $80 a barrel during the next two years, should there be a major supply disruption.

"I can stress that the probability that the price of a barrel of crude rises to $80 in the near future is a low probability," said Adnan Shihab-Eldin in Kuwaiti newspaper al-Qabas. "However, I can't rule out the rise of a barrel of oil to $80 in the coming two years."


__________________