Crude Oil Prices Hit New Record

Crude futures rose to a new high of $62.69 in Asian trading Monday as the U.S. government announced the closure of its embassy and consulates in Saudi Arabia due to security threats and on continued concerns that earlier shutdowns of U.S. oil refineries would reduce supply.

Mid-afternoon in Singapore, light, sweet crude for September delivery on the New York Mercantile Exchange rose as high as $62.69 in Asian electronic trading before slipping back to $62.50, up 19 cents from Friday's close.

On Friday, crude settled in New York at $62.31 a barrel, a record close for crude since Nymex trading began in 1983. That's at least 40 percent higher than a year ago, though crude prices would have to surpass $90 to reach the inflation-adjusted high set in 1980.

Gasoline edged up slightly to $1.8392 a gallon while heating oil rose marginally to $1.7393 a gallon.

September Brent crude futures on London's International Petroleum Exchange also hit a new front-month record high of $61.42 a barrel in electronic trading before falling slightly to $61.40, up 33 cents.

The market was on edge as traders closely monitored geopolitical developments in Saudi Arabia following Sunday's announcement of a security threat against U.S. government buildings. A week ago, the death of the country's king sent futures sharply higher, even though most analysts believe there would be little change in the oil policies of Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest petroleum producer.

The planned closure Monday and Tuesday of the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh and consulates in Jiddah and Dhahran was "in response to a threat against U.S. government buildings" in the kingdom, the embassy said, adding it would also limit nonofficial travel of its mission personnel.

In a statement, it urged Americans residing in the world's largest oil producing and exporting country to keep "a high level of vigilance," but did not elaborate on the nature of the threat.

Hours after the announcement, a Saudi Interior Ministry spokesman, Maj. Gen. Mansour al-Turki, said his government had no information about a possible threat.

Over the past few years, rising oil consumption has strained the world's limited excess production capacity, putting energy traders on edge about any threat to supply.

Meanwhile, analysts said positive U.S. jobs figures on Friday were supporting oil prices.

"The U.S. economy looks healthy and it's safe to infer that the demand for oil and diesel will remain pretty firm and that the price of oil should be helped along as well," said commodities strategist David Thurtell of Commonwealth Bank of Australia in Sydney.

Oil prices rose even though the Organization of Producing and Exporting Countries said late Friday that it increased oil production by 300,000 barrels a day in the last two weeks, to around 30.4 million barrels daily.

The increase was an attempt to cool surging oil prices, OPEC's president Sheik Ahmed Fahd Al Ahmed Al Sabah said, but the market appeared to have largely disregarded the Kuwaiti Prime Minister's remarks, as concerns over unusually frequent refinery outages continued to weigh on traders' minds in a time when most refiners are running at full tilt to meet rising demand.

ConocoPhillips was the latest to suffer a refinery outage. The company reported planned work and unexpected operational upsets at its 145,800-barrel-a-dayr refinery in Borger, Texas. The plant's sulfur recovery unit was shut Friday, with a restart planned for Wednesday.

Meantime, a fire broke out at a unit of Sunoco Inc.'s 330,000 barrels-a-day Philadelphia refinery over the weekend, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported Sunday, citing a company spokesman.

The outages have affected approximately 3 percent of the refining capacity in the United States, according to Barclays Capital.

At least seven other U.S. refineries have reported problems of one kind or another in the last two weeks.