* Fears of oil infrastructure disruption
* Brent premium to WTI rebounds on record Cushing stocks
* Coming Up: U.S. initial jobless claims; 1330 GMT
(Adds quotes, fresh prices, previous SINGAPORE)
By Zaida Espana
LONDON, March 10 (Reuters) - Brent crude futures slipped on
Thursday but remained above $115 a barrel, as forces loyal to
Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi launched a fresh bombardment on
the eastern Libyan oil town of Ras Lanuf, triggering fears of
long-term damage to the country's oil infrastructure.
Bombs or missiles were landing a few kilometres from Ras
Lanuf oil refinery, a Reuters witness said, a day after an oil
pipeline leading to Es Sider was damaged. []
"What we are looking at is possible damages to the oil
installations. Up to now we still had the residually optimistic
scenario, but if oil installations are being damaged, there is a
completely different situation. We may have to restructure
everything in the medium term to adapt to a substitute to Libyan
oil", Christophe Barret from CA CIB said. "It means Libya could
remain out of the picture for a long time."
"There are long run concerns over infrastructure damage,"
VTB Capital analyst Andrey Kryuchenkov said.
Brent crude for April <LCOc1> were 59 cents lower to $115.35
a barrel at 1050 GMT after soaring almost $3 on Wednesday.
U.S. crude futures <CLc1> fell 44 cents to $103.95 after
touching a 2-1/2-year peak of almost $107 earlier this week.
Attention is still focused on Libyan oil exports after an
official from the East Libya oil company AGOCO told Reuters the
company is making arrangements to market oil directly to foreign
buyers, instead of through its state-owned parent. []
The oil port of Brega ran out of crude oil stocks, forcing
crude tankers to cancel shipments or travel to Saudi Arabia, a
source told Reuters. Libya turned away an oil tanker hired by
Chinese oil trading firm Unipec to lift 2.0 million barrels of
Es Sider crude, a trading source said Thursday. []
"The large explosions and enormous columns of smoke from
storage tanks and other facilities in Ras Lanuf, close to the Es
Sider terminal, are perhaps more than merely symbolic," Barclays
Capital oil analysts headed by Paul Horsnell said.
"They represent a final fading of any residual realistic
hope that the outage of Libyan oil could prove to be anything
other than prolonged.
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Graphics showing:
Middle East unrest http://r.reuters.com/nym77r
Saudi Arabia's main oil producing region
http://link.reuters.com/gew48r
FACTBOX on emergency oil stockpiles []
Graphics on U.S. strategic oil reserve, U.S. and other IEA
nations' reserves: http://link.reuters.com/cah48r
Graphic of U.S. oil stocks: http://r.reuters.com/sup48r
Brent and WTI open interest http://r.reuters.com/cag48r
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PRESSURE MOUNTS ON LIBYA
International pressure continues to mount after Russia said
it would ban all weapons sales to Libya, while Germany ordered a
freeze on bank accounts held by the Libyan central bank and the
Libyan Investment Authority. [] []
Confirming previous non-Libyan estimates, Shokri Ghanem,
chairman of Libya's National Oil Corp, said production had been
cut to about half a million barrels per day from 1.6 million bpd
by the war, as many foreign and local workers had left
oilfields. []
Libyan oil trade has been paralyzed as banks decline to
clear payments in dollars due to U.S. sanctions, though Austrian
energy group OMV said it had been buying small amounts of Libyan
crude oil and would continue to do so.
"It appears that most of Libya's bridges with OECD countries
in particular are already aflame or may have already been
burned," Barclays Capital said.
"One can now easily imagine circumstances in which Libya's
previously very short-haul exports of crude oil become very
long-haul indeed."
Saudi Arabia has increased production to 9 million bpd,
almost 1 million bpd above its OPEC target. The kingdom says it
holds spare capacity of 3.5 million bpd. [] Still,
an OPEC delegate said on Wednesday the group saw no need for an
emergency meeting to discuss raising output. []
On Wednesday, U.S. light crude fell after stockpiles at the
pricing point for benchmark West Texas Intermediate at Cushing,
Oklahoma, surged 1.7 million barrels to a record of almost 40.3
million barrels, according to the U.S. Energy Information
Administration.
That caused the discount of WTI to European marker Brent
<CL-LCO1> to widen, trading at $11.31 a barrel by 1000 GMT.
Total U.S. crude inventories rose 2.5 million barrels last
week, the EIA said, dwarfing the forecast for an increase of
just 400,000 barrels in a Reuters poll. The weekly inventory
data also showed drawdowns for gasoline and distillates were
bigger than expected, reflecting improving demand. []
(Additional reporting by Alejandro Barbajosa in Singapore;
editing by James Jukwey)
