CRUDE oil prices reached a record high of US$118.05 a barrel in New York yesterday amid concern that an industrial dispute in Scotland and supply disruptions in Nigeria would limit availability.
Unions are planning a strike at a refinery in Grangemouth that receives shipments of a benchmark crude oil from the North Sea while Royal Dutch Shell said that 169,000 barrels a day from Nigeria had been suspended because of attacks last week in Africa's largest producer.
The rise came as OPEC's secretary-general announced plans to boost oil production target capacity by 5 million barrels a day by 2012.
Abdalla Salem el-Badri yesterday said OPEC members were planning to spend US$160 billion over the next four years to boost production capacity.
He also said at an energy forum in Rome that issues of supply and demand were being discussed but that he didn't expect any agreement on whether prices were too high or too low.
Nigeria, the fifth-largest exporter to the United States last year, produces low-sulfur crude prized by refiners because of the proportion of high-value gasoline it yields. The country pumped 1.96 million barrels a day of crude in March, according to a Bloomberg News survey, down from 2.4 million barrels a day at the end of 2005 as militant attacks on pipelines have increased.
Ineos Group Holdings proceeded with the shutdown of its 200,000-barrel-a-day Grangemouth refinery yesterday as talks continued over pension scheme arrangements.