LONDON, July 29: World oil prices jumped to $61 per barrel on Friday after an explosion at a BP oil refinery in Texas, in the southern United States, that injured nobody but ignited concerns about energy supplies ahead of the fourth quarter. New York’s main contract, light sweet crude for delivery in September, reached $61 for the first time since July 13. It stood at $60.95, a gain of $1.01 on Thursday’s closing price.

In London, the price of Brent North Sea crude oil for delivery in September advanced $1.02 to $59.78 per barrel. “The explosion caused knee-jerk buying across the oil complex, this has also triggered technical buying,” Sucden broker Robert Montefusco said.

BP spokesman Robert Wine told AFP there had been a fire overnight at the group’s Texas City refinery. “No one has been hurt, we issued just a warning to local residents to close the windows and stay indoors, but there have been no particular hazards,” he added. An explosion at the refinery in March killed 15 people.

When fully operational, the Texas City plant, BP’s biggest, processes 460,000 barrels of oil daily.

“It appears that the plant is 60,000 barrels (per day) down from the blast, but there is a possibility that the blast will not affect production in the long term as they could move the (refining) production to another part of the plant,” Montefusco said.

Refineries are working flat out to produce enough heating fuel in time for the northern hemisphere winter later this year. Oil futures reached a record $62.10 per barrel in New York and $60.70 in London on July 7 in the wake of fatal bombings in London.

On Friday, prices also won support from fires at relatively minor production centres in India and the United States.

Dealers said the market had overreacted to a fire at a small US refinery in Meraux, Louisiana, as well as a deadly blaze at an offshore oil platform near the Indian city of Mumbai.

“Everyone has to be doing 100 percent to keep up with demand. Even outages for small periods affect supply in the market,” said Tobin Gorey, a commodities analyst at the Commonwealth Bank in Sydney.

He said the impact of the two fires was “magnified a great deal by the market really producing at full tilt”.

At least 11 people have been confirmed dead in the fire at the Indian offshore oil platform fire. Oil Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar told parliament that 384 people had had to abandon the platform when it caught fire Wednesday.

State-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corp., which owns the platform, said 12 workers were still missing.—AFP