Azerbaijan, Baku, April 25 / Trend /
Crude oil gained for a fourth day in New York, the longest rising streak since December, as escalating violence in the Middle East and Africa threatens to prolong supply disruptions, Bloomberg reported.
Futures advanced as much as 0.7 percent after Syrian security forces detained at least 200 protesters while unrest showed no sign of ending in Yemen. U.S. Senator John McCain said rebels in Libya need more assistance in the fight against Muammar Qaddafi's forces. Saudi Arabia, holder of the world's largest crude reserves, has no plans to raise production capacity, an oil official said.
"The supply-side story hasn't changed, we lost more than 1 million barrels a day in Libya," Dominic Schnider, a Singapore- based director for wealth management research at UBS AG, told Susan Li in a Bloomberg Television interview. "Even if you're going to raise production, the market will be concerned about what happens down the road, if you have an outage in, let's say, Nigeria, where you have high-quality crude."
Oil for June delivery rose as much as 78 cents to $113.07 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. That's the highest intraday price since April 11, when futures reached $113.46, the most since September 2008. The contract was at $112.72 at 3:08 p.m.
Brent crude oil for June settlement increased 46 cents, or 0.4 percent, to $124.45 a barrel on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange.