(Recasts, updates prices, previous SINGAPORE)
LONDON, April 7 (Reuters) - Oil rose towards $107 on Monday,
continuing last week's late rally after OPEC's secretary-general
reiterated the group saw little need to pump more oil.
U.S. light, sweet crude for May delivery <CLc1> rose 59
cents to $106.82 a barrel by 0847 GMT after leaping $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.
London Brent crude <LCOc1> rose 33 cents to $105.22.
"The key driver will be continued financial investors
inflows into oil," said Societe Generale in a report,
reasserting its $107.50 forecast for average oil prices in the
second quarter.
"On balance, we take comfort in the fact that front-month
crude prices appear to have found a floor at $100, and appear to
be trending sideways."
Oil rose even as the dollar rallied on 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. []
Aanalysts said fundamentals also supported prices.
"The biggest surprises could be on the supply side. Non-OPEC
supply is just not going up this year," Paul Horsnell, oil
analyst at Barclays Capital in London.
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.
"OPEC is not under any pressure... to raise crude output,"
Badri told reporters in Tehran, IRNA reported, adding that there
were no plans to hold an emergency meeting ahead of its next
planned gathering in September. []
OPEC is also concerned about the potential impact of an
economic slowdown in the United States on oil demand from the
world's biggest consumer.
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
(bpd) 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. []
(Reporting by Jonathan Leff in Singapore and Maryelle
Demongeot in London)
