by Perrine Faye
LONDON, Sept 8 (AFP) - Oil prices turned higher on Wednesday on news that a US refiner had closed a plant in the Caribbean due to Hurricane Ivan.
The announcement saw prices reverse early losses seen in London after Iraq resumed pumping crude through a key northern pipeline.
The price of benchmark Brent North Sea crude oil for delivery in October rose 15 cents to 40.91 dollars per barrel in late afternoon deals.
New York's reference contract, light sweet crude for October delivery, climbed 24 cents to 43.55 dollars per barrel in early trading.
"We are going up on the fact that the Valero refinery has been shut down in Aruba due to the hurricane Ivan," said Lee Elliott, trader at GNI-Man Financial.
The refinery can process over 300,000 barrels per day of oil.
In Miami, the US national hurricane center said the "extremely dangerous hurricane Ivan continues westward across the southeastern Caribbean."
The new hurricane came hot on the heels of Hurricane Frances, which sent prices higher briefly last week on fears of disruption to oil industry activity in the Gulf of Mexico.
"Traders are watching the storm's progress as its projected route could take it into the Gulf of Mexico where it would have the potential to threaten much larger oil production facilities," analysts at the Sucden brokerage firm said.
Earlier an Iraqi oil official said pumping of Kirkuk crude oil from the northern Iraqi city to Turkey had resumed at a rate of 200,000 barrels per day (bpd) after sabotage attacks halted all exports last week.
"Pumping resumed at midnight on a spare line to Ceyhan" terminal in Turkey, said an official from the North Oil Co. on condition of anonymity.
"This is a first step immediately after we successfully put out the fire ignited by saboteurs" on September 2, he added.
Iraq has been exporting between 1.6 and 2.0 million bpd from its southern terminals.
Elsewhere, traders awaited publication Thursday of the latest weekly US commercial crude inventory data, and looked ahead to next week's OPEC meeting.
"We should see more crude available in the short term," said Societe Generale analyst Frederic Lasserre, noting that Saudi oil produced at the end of July should start to show up in US and European inventories.
Regarding oil price levels meanwhile, OPEC president Purnomo Yusgiantoro Wednesday blamed a "political premium" of 10-15 US dollars per barrel for the current cost of crude.
Speaking ahead of a meeting next week by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries to discuss output policy, Yusgiantoro said that although the cartel was exceeding its supply quotas, the market was not responding.
"According to our view based on the fundamentals -- supply and demand values -- the price should not be as high as what we see today," he told reporters at the 19th World Energy Congress in Sydney.
"What we see is a political premium between 10-15 dollars per barrel."