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Oil Surges More Than $7 to Highest Level Since 2008 on Libya
Feb. 22 (Bloomberg) -- Oil surged to the highest level in more than two years as intensifying violence in Libya fueled concern that supplies from the holder of Africa’s largest crude reserves may be disrupted.

Prices in New York jumped 8.6 percent from the Feb. 18 settlement as soldiers deserted Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi’s government and diplomats resigned. Saudi Arabian Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi said there is “absolutely no shortage of supply” and that OPEC will be ready to boost output if one develops.

“The world could deal with the loss of Libyan barrels, but the worry is that it won’t stop at Libya,” said Bill O’Grady, chief market strategist at Confluence Investment Management in St. Louis. “We don’t know where this is going to end.”

Crude for March delivery gained $7.37 to $93.57 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, the highest settlement since Oct. 3, 2008. Futures have risen 17 percent in the past year. U.S. financial markets were closed yesterday for the Presidents Day holiday.

The March contract expired at the close of floor trading today. The more-active April contract increased $5.71, or 6.4 percent, to settle at $95.42 a barrel.

Libya declared force majeure on all oil exports, Reuters reported, citing sources it didn’t identify. Force majeure allows producers to miss contractual obligations because of circumstances beyond their control.

Qaddafi said he will fight until his last drop of blood, after government forces attacked protesters and rebels claimed control of Benghazi, Libya’s second-largest city. He said the police and army will impose order tomorrow and vowed to use force if necessary, in a speech on state-run television.

Saudi Arabia has 4 million barrels a day of spare capacity, al-Naimi said at a press conference at the ministerial meeting of the International Energy Forum in Riyadh. All the world’s producers, including Saudi Arabia, could pump an additional 6 million barrels, he said.

The kingdom is the world’s largest oil exporter and the largest producer in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. The IEF represents about 90 percent of global supply and demand.

The Paris-based International Energy Agency said in a statement earlier on its website that “the IEA stands ready, as always, to make oil available to the market in the event of a major supply disruption if alternative supplies cannot be made available via normal market mechanisms.”

Price Surge

The world economy can withstand the surge in oil prices sparked by the unrest in the Middle East for a short time, John Lipsky, the No. 2 official at the International Monetary Fund, said on Bloomberg Television’s “Inside Track” today.

“If the fears of disruption prove to be temporary, the markets are amply supplied,” said Lipsky, the first deputy managing director at the IMF, which based its economic forecasts for this year on $95 a barrel oil. “More than that, substantially more than that, for these kinds of reasons, fears of disruption, would be very difficult in many dimensions.”

Anti-government riots that started in Tunisia have also spread through Egypt, Yemen, Algeria, Iran, Bahrain and Morocco. Countries in North Africa and the Middle East were responsible for 36 percent of global oil output and held 61 percent of proved reserves in 2009, according to BP Plc, which publishes its Statistical Review of World Energy each June.

“Violence isn’t necessary to disrupt supply,” said John Kilduff, a partner at Again Capital LLC, a New York-based hedge fund that focuses on energy. “All we need is a strike or attack on infrastructure.”

Brent

Brent oil for April settlement on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange gained 4 cents to $105.78 a barrel, the highest settlement since Sept. 22, 2008.

The spread between the two main April crude oil contracts narrowed to $10.39 a barrel, down from $12.81 Feb. 18.

Protests in Bahrain, provoked by discontent among the majority-Shiite Muslim population, have sparked concern the violence will erupt in neighboring Saudi Arabia, which holds one-fifth of the world’s oil. Saudi Arabia has a Shiite minority concentrated in its eastern oil-producing hub.

Brent may surge to a record if the unrest in Libya continues and spreads to other Middle Eastern oil producers such as Saudi Arabia, according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Brent touched a record $147.50 a barrel in July 2008.

“The real key is the contagion risk,” Jeffrey Currie, the bank’s London-based head of commodities, said in Hong Kong today. “Then prices could test historical highs.”

Libya pumped 1.59 million barrels a day of oil in January, according to data compiled by Bloomberg News, making it the eighth-largest producer among those with quotas in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. The group pumps 40 percent of the world’s oil.

Oil volume in electronic trading on the Nymex was 1.33 million contracts as of 2:46 p.m. in New York. Volume totaled 952,938 contracts Feb. 18, 29 percent above the average of the past three months. Open interest was 1.51 million contracts.

--With assistance from Nidaa Bakhsh and Grant Smith in London, Maher Chmaytelli and Ayesha Daya in Riyadh and Erik Schatzker in New York. Editors: Joe Link, Charlotte Porter

To contact the reporters on this story: Margot Habiby in Dallas at mhabiby@bloomberg.net; Mark Shenk in New York at mshenk1@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Bill Banker at bbanker@bloomberg.net.
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