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BANGKOK—Oil
prices spiked to a record $117.40 a barrel after a
Japanese oil tanker was attacked in Middle Eastern
waters, off the east coast of Yemen.
The
150,000-ton tanker Takayama was attacked about 440
kilometers off the Yemen coast in the Gulf of Aden while
it was heading for Saudi Arabia, its Japanese operator,
Nippon Yusen K.K., said in a statement posted on its web
site.
None of
the ship’s 23 crew members was injured, and the extent
of damage to the tanker was under investigation, the
company said. Kyodo News agency reported that the
Japanese tanker was leaking fuel after it was fired on
by a rocket launcher from a small boat. No other details
were immediately available.
News of
the attack pushed crude-oil futures higher into record
territory.
“There’s
clearly some geopolitical tension in the market,” said
Mark Pervan, senior commodity strategist at the ANZ Bank
in Melbourne, Australia. “This will die down, but the
market is pretty jittery at the moment,” he said.
Light,
sweet crude for May delivery fell back quickly after
pushing to $117.40 a barrel. At 0913 GMT, the contract
was at $117.02 a barrel, up 33 cents from the close at
the end of last week.
Last
Friday, it rose to touch $117 for the first time after
an attack on a Royal Dutch Shell Plc. pipeline by the
Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta—the
main militant group in
Nigeria’s
restive south.
The
group also promised further attacks on the petroleum
industry in Africa’s largest producer of crude oil.
Pervan
said incidents such as the pipeline and tanker attacks
were “one-off” issues that didn’t really change the
supply-demand fundamentals of the market.
Comments
over the weekend by an Opec official that the group
isn’t likely to increase production also supported
prices on Monday.
Abdullah
el al-Badri, secretary-general of the Organization of
Petroleum-Exporting Countries (Opec), said on Sunday
that oil prices would likely go higher and that the
group was ready to raise production if the price
pressure was due to a shortage of supply—something he
doubted.
“Oil
prices, there is a common understanding that has nothing
to do with supply and demand,” al-Badri said on the
sidelines of an energy conference in Rome.
Last
Friday, Shell confirmed a pipeline leak that it said
appeared to have been caused by explosives. It said it
had isolated the line for repairs and that a small
quantity of production had been shut.
Attacks
since early 2006 on Nigerian oil infrastructure by the
militant group have cut nearly one-quarter of the
country’s normal petroleum output, boosting oil prices.
Nigeria
is a major supplier of oil to the US.
Also
over the weekend,
Iran’s
hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was quoted as
saying crude-oil prices at $115 a barrel are too low,
and that oil must “discover its real value.”
The
Iranian president made the remarks during a visit to an
oil-and- gas exhibition in Tehran late Friday.
Brent
crude futures for June rose 23 cents to $114.15 a barrel
on the ICE Futures exchange in London. AP |
