- NEW YORK (AFP) -- World oil
prices sizzled at new all-time highs as Iraq's southern oil fields halted
pumping to avoid a threatened attack by Shiite Muslim militia.
-
- New York's light sweet crude for delivery in September
surged 1.02 dollars to 44.97 dollars a barrel early afternoon, thundering
past the previous record, set Friday, of 44.77 dollars.
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- Brent North Sea crude oil for September delivery surged
1.02 dollars to an unprecedented 41.65 dollars.
-
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- Iraq oil pumping stopped as factional fighting raged.
-
- The Southern Oil Company ceased production for "security
reasons" after Shiite militia threatened to attack infrastructure,
spokesman Mohammed al-Mohammedi said.
-
- The south had been the only outlet for Iraqi oil. An
attack on the pipeline to Turkey halted northern shipments last week.
-
- "It is the renewed uprising of insurgency in Iraq
which really got things going," said Refco market analyst Marshall
Steeves.
-
- "There is a lot of concern there for supplies,"
Steeves said.
-
- "The Southern Oil Company reported that it stopped
pumping oil because militia troops were threatening to attack its facilities.
It looks like the militia are roaming the streets of Basra, which of course
is the southern oil port. Also, the oil ministry compound itself in Baghdad
was hit by insurgents. There is a lot of unrest there."
-
- Steeves said oil shipments in the Persian Gulf also were
slow because of a breach in a 38,000-barrel-a-day pipeline serving Basra.
-
- Finally, a report that Russian bailiffs were freezing
oil titan Yukos' main production unit would likey exacerbate concerns,
he said.
-
- "I think that will throw fuel on the fire."
-
- Prices had taken a slight breather earlier Monday on
hopes of an increase in official OPEC production quotas and a mooted rescue
for Russian energy giant Yukos.
-
- Yukos faces possible bankruptcy because of a massive
tax demand from Russian tax authorities, threatening to interrupt oil deliveries.
-
- US Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said a tight world
market was driving up oil prices but the administration of President George
W. Bush had no plan to tap emergency reserves.
-
- "The biggest thing behind it (rising oil prices)
is just that demand continues to rise," he told CNBC television.
-
- World oil production was humming at nearly full capacity
but economic growth in the United States and elsewhere had led to a "very
substantial increase in demand," Abraham said.
-
- The administration would not release oil from the Strategic
Petroleum Reserve (SPR) to cut prices, Abraham said.
-
- "We will use our oil reserves if there is a severe
disruption in supplies but those reserves are not to manipulate prices
with," he said.
-
- Bush in November 2001 ordered that the reserve, stored
in huge underground salt caverns along the coastline of the Gulf of Mexico,
be filled to its capacity of 700 million barrels. The petroleum reserve
is now at a record 665.7 million barrels.
-
- OPEC President Purnomo Yusgiantoro said the cartel may
raise its production quotas to prevent further overheating in the oil market.
-
- Yusgiantoro said the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting
Countries was capable of beefing up production because of excess capacity.
-
- "The possibility is always open. We have over-capacity,
so it can be increased," he told reporters in Jakarta, adding that
the measure would be discussed at the next OPEC meeting in Vienna on September
14.
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- The price of the OPEC basket of seven crude oils reached
a new record high of 39.67 dollars on Friday as world oil prices kept soaring,
the organisation said in a statement Monday.
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