LONDON (AFP) - World oil prices bolted up to new record summits beyond 52 dollars on markets nervous about tight global supplies with winter looming in the northern hemisphere.
The price of reference light sweet crude for November delivery climbed to as high as 52.53 dollars a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange, the highest level in the contract's 21-year history.
US crude futures later eased back slightly to 52.31 dollars, showing a gain of 29 cents from the previous close.
In London Brent North Sea crude oil for delivery in November rose to a new record of 48.50 dollars a barrel in early trading. It stood at 48.40 dollars in late morning deals, a gain of 41 cents.
Prices pushed into unchartered territory after weekly estimates of US commercial oil inventories released Wednesday showed falls in stocks of heating oil.
"There's a lot of concern surrounding the levels of stocks in the US," said Veronica Smart, an analyst at the Energy Information Centre, a British-based consultancy.
"We're approaching winter when demand is obviously higher, particularly for gasoil. If we do have a particularly harsh winter I think supplies could struggle."
In the event of a cold snap, "we could definitely see Brent breaking 50 dollars a barrel and heading further up," she predicted.
Weekly US crude oil and gasoline inventories rose modestly as importers and refiners began to recover from Hurricane Ivan, the Energy Department said Wednesday.
Crude oil inventories in the week to October 1 rose 1.1 million barrels to 274.0 million, the Energy Department said.
Gasoline stocks climbed 600,000 barrels to 199.4 million as refiners were able to boost output after Ivan, it said.
US commercial inventories of distillates -- mostly diesel and heating oil -- fell by 2.1 million barrels to 123.4 million in the week to October 1, the US Energy Department said.
Almost 27 percent of the Gulf of Mexico's 1.7 million barrels of daily oil production remains disrupted, according to the US Department of the Interior.
More than 15 million barrels of output has so far been affected, equal to around 2.5 percent of the Gulf of Mexico's annual oil production.
"It appears that roughly 50 percent of the natural gas production and 40 percent of crude output knocked off-line by Hurricane Ivan will remain off-line until end-October," Merrill Lynch chief energy strategist Michael Rothman wrote in a research note.
"Information from sources we consider reliable suggest to us that nearly 100 percent of currently shut down crude and natural gas output could be available in roughly five weeks' time," he added.
Adjusted for inflation, world oil prices remain far below the levels reached in the wake of the 1979 Iranian revolution when prices surged to upwards of 80 dollars a barrel in today's money.
But prices have more than doubled from about 20 dollars a barrel in New York at the start of 2002, surging by about 50 percent since the start of this year.