Oil Inches Up, OPEC “Sees NO Evil, Hears No Evil”

Monday oil jumped $107, continuing last week's retrace after OPEC's secretary-general reiterated the group saw little need to pump more oil.

U.S. light, sweet crude for delivery in May inched up $106.82, up 59 cents a barrel after soaring $2.40 a barrel on Friday, recouping all of the week's earlier losses when investors sought shelter from the falling U.S. dollar.

Prices hit an earlier high of $106.91. Brent crude hit $105.22, up 39 cents.

Oil soared even as the dollar revived Monday, joining buoyant equity and credit markets in shrugging off last week's soft U.S. job data as investors took heart from central bank efforts to alleviate the global credit crunch.

As oil prices resume climbing toward their March 17 record high of $111.80, OPEC has continued to see the market as well-supplied.

"Oil supply to the market is enough and high oil prices are not due to a shortage of crude but rather it is because of the decrease in the dollar's value, shortage of refinery capacity and some political tensions in the world," OPEC Secretary-General Abdullah al-Badri was quoted as saying by Iran's official IRNA news agency.

Data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration showed average implied oil demand in the United States over the first 13 weeks of the year down more than 479,000 barrels per day from a year ago.

Crude oil speculators on the New York Mercantile Exchange have more than halved their bullish price bets since they neared an all-time peak in mid-March, regulatory data showed.

Net long positions last week slipped to 47,073 lots from 53,892 in the previous week.