LONDON, Sept 13 (AFP) - Oil prices bolted higher on Monday on fears of disruption to production and import activity in the Gulf of Mexico because of Hurricane Ivan, traders said.
The price of benchmark Brent North Sea crude oil for delivery in October gained 45 cents to 40.65 dollars a barrel in early trading.
New York`s reference light sweet crude for delivery in October climbed 54 cents to 43.35 dollars in pre-opening electronic deals.
"Hurricane Ivan is now heading somewhere between Texas and Florida," said Prudential Bache broker Christopher Bellew.
"This means that Ivan will not threaten oil installations, but prices are higher because of the precautionary shutdowns for oil installations," he added.
Bellew noted that oil prices had fallen heavily on Friday after weather forecasters predicted that Ivan`s course would not affect US oil installations.
Hurricane Ivan headed towards Cuba early Monday after wreaking havoc in the tiny Cayman Islands, leaving at least 46 dead in its rampage across the Caribbean.
Mexico evacuated thousands of people from the Yucatan peninsula over the weekend, where hurricane watches and tropical storm warnings were in effect.
"Hurricane Ivan`s rampage through the Caribbean added fresh support as traders feared the storm will disrupt oil facilities," analysts at the Sucden brokerage firm wrote in a note to clients.
On Sunday oil giant Shell said it had shut offshore production wells in the eastern Gulf of Mexico and evacuated some workers, they noted.
OPEC ministers were due to begin arriving in Vienna ahead of a meeting on Wednesday to discuss output, though analysts said there was little more the cartel could do to bring down prices.
Even if the producer group vowed to raise output further, in reality it had little spare capacity left, they said.
OPEC is expected to discuss raising its 22-28 dollar per barrel target price band, which is far below current prices.
"Consensus seems to favour a price band hike (to centre on 30 dollars) and an increase in quota (albeit with little chance of actually higher output)," analysts at Deutsche Bank told clients.
An increase in quotas of one million barrels per day to 27.0 million barrels would still leave OPEC`s production ceiling below its actual output of about 28 million barrels a day, excluding Iraq, they said.
Analysts at Barclays Capital said they expected no change to either production or quotas at the OPEC meeting, though the target price band might be altered.