by Perrine Faye
LONDON, Sept 2 (AFP) - Oil prices climbed on Thursday after Russian oil giant Yukos warned it might have to halt production and as a hurricane sparked concerns of supply disruptions in the United States, traders said.
The price of benchmark Brent North Sea crude oil for delivery in October rose 49 cents to 41.96 dollars a barrel in late morning trading in London.
New York's reference light sweet crude for October delivery gained 18 cents to 44.18 dollars in pre-opening electronic trading.
Prices shot up after Yukos's latest warning. The oil group faces claims for billions of dollars in back taxes by the Russian government, while its jailed founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky is on trial for tax evasion and fraud.
The market was also keeping a close watch on Hurricane Frances, said Robert Laughlin, a trader at GNI-Man Financial.
Hurricane Frances lashed the Turks and Caicos and the Bahamas as it barreled toward Florida, where authorities have declared a state of emergency.
"Dangerous category four (Hurricane) Frances continues west-northwestward through the Bahamas," the Miami-based National Hurricane Center said on its website.
"A hurricane warning remains in effect for all of the Bahamas and for the Turks and Caicos islands. The hurricane watch is extended southward along the Florida east coast to Craig Key," it added.
Oil prices jumped by nearly two dollars a barrel in New York on Wednesday after an announcement that US crude stocks had dropped for the fifth straight week raised supply worries.
Previously prices had plunged by more than 10 percent in little over a week as worries about supply threats in Iraq, Russia and Venezuela eased.
"I think the market was overdone on Monday and Tuesday. It got sold-off too quickly," said Laughlin.
"There are still a lot of problems around and a lot of demand for oil as shown in the stocks figures. I think too many people thought the bubble had burst and prices were going to come down, but that is not the case."
Crude prices had dropped during seven of the previous eight sessions until Wednesday's U-turn, after marking a record of 49.40 dollars on August 20.
US commercial crude inventories slid by 4.2 million barrels to 287.1 million in the week ending August 27, the US Energy Department said.
International Energy Agency chief Claude Mandil meanwhile called on oil producing countries to invest more in infrastructure so they can boost output.
"We need much more investment in the oil sector globally, among listed companies and state enterprises. The demand for oil is rising more quickly than anticipated," he told the Financial Times Deutschland newspaper.
"The capacity for additional production among oil producing countries is extremely weak, far lower that in the 1990s," he said.