Oil prices rally on future supply concerns
LONDON, JUN 3 (AFP)

World oil prices today rebounded on disruption to exports leaving Iraq and concern about possible heating fuel shortages during the northern hemisphere winter, traders said.

New York's main contract, light sweet crude for delivery in July, gained 77 cents to 54.40 dollars per barrel in early deals.

The contract had slid 97 cents to close at 53.63 dollars per barrel yesterday after official data showed a jump in US crude stockpiles that eased gasoline, or petrol, supply worries.

In London, the price of Brent North Sea crude oil for delivery in July jumped 1.23 dollars to 53.63 dollars per barrel after losing 87 cents yesterday.

"It seems to be the continuation of a very erratic market," Bache Financial trader Tony Machacek said.

"The only vaguely bullish development is that the northern Iraqi exports, which only just restarted yesterday (Thursday after months of inactivity), have been closed again this morning." Iraqi oil exports to Turkey's Mediterranean port of Ceyhan were interrupted today as the result of an established shipping schedule and not because of sabotage, an official at the Northern Oil Company said later.

"Oil shipments which began Thursday were interrupted Friday according to an export schedule adopted by the NOC which consists of pumping crude oil on an intermittent basis," the official told AFP from the oil hub of Kirkuk.

Machacek noted also that concerns about distillate inventories, which include heating fuel and diesel, were providing support to prices.