LONDON, Feb 11: Oil prices moved sharply higher on Monday after Venezuela President Hugo Chavez threatened to cut oil sales to the United States and as traders tracked fresh unrest in Nigeria.

The threat from Chavez boosted prices, even as analysts downplayed the chances of Venezuela actually slashing crude exports in its dispute with several of the largest US oil companies.

New York’s main contract, light sweet crude for delivery in March, soared $2 to $93.77 per barrel.

Brent North Sea crude for March jumped $1.59 to $93.53.

“The key issue influencing market sentiment seems to be the on-going spat between the US and Venezuela, which has escalated in the past few days,” said oil market analyst Kevin Norrish at Barclays Capital.

President Chavez threatened over the weekend to turn off the taps to the US should American energy giant ExxonMobil succeed in claiming billions of dollars in Venezuelan assets as compensation for expropriated oil fields.

Venezuela one of the world’s top 10 oil producers and the largest in Latin America is the fourth largest supplier of oil to the United States, with daily exports of some 1.3 million barrels.

In his weekly radio and television show on Sunday, Chavez condemned the US oil giant “bandits” and “white-collar criminals” and said the clash with the company was “the tip of an iceberg that is economic war.”

However, analysts dismissed the threat, which comes after ExxonMobil, one of the world’s fourth largest oil companies, won international court orders freezing up to $12bn in assets of Venezuela’s state oil firm Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA).

“I don’t expect anything to come out of this in terms of actually cutting supplies to the US,” said Societe Generale analyst Mike Wittner.—AFP