Sky-rocketing crude oil prices rose again on Friday after OPEC-member Nigeria said the cartel may agree in March to raise output.
US light crude rose 21 cents to $53.78 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. A rally that started at midweek had prices briefly within 50 cents of last October?s $55.67 record.
However, London Brent crude fell 15 cents to $51.80 a barrel after hitting 53.00 on Thursday, its highest price in 17 years of trade on the International Petroleum Exchange.
Nigeria?s presidential advisor on petroleum, Edmund Daukoru, told Reuters in an interview that members were eager to prevent high prices from damaging world economic growth and could agree to raise quotas or relax compliance.
"I can see two potential outcomes: that discipline would be relaxed so everybody could really do close to their available potential, except Saudi Arabia. We may, on the other hand, take a definite increase in production, in quota," Daukoru said.
