LONDON, Oct 11 (AFP) - World oil prices shot to new record high points Monday, nearing 54 dollars in New York, amid the start of a general strike in Nigeria and as a long-running industrial dispute in Norway intensified, analysts said.
The price of reference light sweet crude for November delivery rose 32 cents to reach a new summit of 53.63 dollars a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
It was a new high in the contract's 21-year history and beat a peak of 53.40 dollars reached last Friday. After hitting a new record, the contract traded at 53.52 dollars.
In London Brent North Sea crude oil for delivery in November hit 50 dollars a barrel for the first time in the contract's 16-year history, rising by 51 cents to 50.22 dollars in early afternoon deals on Monday. It later traded at 50.15 dollars.
The new records "are above all due to worries about the strikes in Norway and Nigeria", Societe Generale analyst Frederic Lasserre.
The worry, he explained, was that both countries were producers of light sweet crude, highly sought after ahead of winter in the northern hemisphere, especially by the United States.
Low in sulphur, light sweet crude is easier and cheaper to refine into petrol, gasoil and heating oil, according to analysts.
In Nigeria, unions began a four-day general strike on Monday in protest at rising fuel prices, launching their latest challenge to President Olusegun Obasanjo and his programme of economic reforms.
Nigeria is Africa's largest oil producer, with exports of around 2.5 million barrels per day. Meanwhile in Norway, the world's third biggest exporter of crude, strike action by some 200 off-shore workers that has lasted since the beginning of July was set to be extended later Monday, union officials said.
Analysts have said that supply worries are having a magnified impact on prices because of concerns about unbridled consumption in the United States and Asia as well as the low level of US commercial oil inventories.
Markets meanwhile shrugged off assurance by Middle East oil ministers that their oil supplies would meet soaring demand.
"My message to the world (is) there's no shortage, there'll be no shortage, and we are willing to meet demand as it rises," Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Nuaimi told reporters in Abu Dhabi on Sunday.
Nuaimi said Saudi Arabia, the world's largest oil exporter, was producing at full capacity in an effort to reassure markets.
His counterparts from Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates said the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) was doing its best to meet demand and calm prices.
"OPEC is talking about releasing more oil but I don't think the market is taking any notice of that at the moment, because the quality of the oil they are ready to offer is not what the market really needs," GNI-Man Financial trader Kevin Blemkin said, in reference to the fact that they produce mainly heavy crude, rich in sulphur.
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 65 percent since the start of this year.