OREANDA-NEWS. March 05, 2011. After taking a breather on Thursday, Brent crude for April settlement was back on the upside track yesterday, rising USD 1.18, or 1%, to end the session at USD 115.97/bl on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange. The contract gained 3.4% over the past week, the sixth straight weekly increase. On the New York Mercantile Exchange, crude for April delivery closed USD 2.51, or 2.5%, higher at USD 104.42/bbl. The contract finished the week 6.7% higher than last Friday’s closing level of USD 97.88. Oil spiked 2.5% after Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi sent troops to recapture towns in the western part of the country and moved to squelch protests in Tripoli. Also, an oil company building was bombed in Brega, a Libyan energy hub with a terminal and refinery. The rebels have repelled government attempts to retake the town over the past three days. The market remains worried about the unrest in Libya and the threat of a contagion.

In Saudi Arabia, demonstrators demanded the release of Shiite prisoners allegedly being held unjustly. Security forces were also reported to have opened fire on anti-government protesters in northern Yemen Friday, killing two people. Technical analysis shows that Brent could break through USD 119/bbl as prices continue to overtake the 9-day, 14-day and 40-day moving averages. We view this as a bullish signal for near-term trading and still expect the European benchmark to reach and then consolidate around the USD 120/bbl mark, with WTI gravitating around the USD 110/bbl level. Within the next few sessions we see the targets as USD 117.81 and then the February 24 peak of USD 119.79, which could be breached as early as next week.Stateside, crude traded higher Friday after the US government reported that job growth picked up in February and the unemployment rate went down for the third straight month. Importantly, nonfarm payrolls increased by 192,000 in February, and the unemployment rate ticked lower to 8.9%. In addition, US factory orders in January advanced 3.1%, the biggest gain since September 2006. Moving forward, we think traders were reluctant to be short on oil heading into the weekend, given the possibility of renewed escalation of the conflict while the market is offline.

We will likely see this “weekend effect” hold sway as long as the fighting continues to range. The ongoing unrest and the possibility of escalating violence will likely place a floor under oil futures in the coming weeks and months as the supply-disruption risk premium has become an integral part of market pricing. More than likely, this civil war will drag out for a long time and even if the situation is brought under control, low or high-grade skirmishes could break out again or the uprising could spread elsewhere at a later time, as Oman, Bahrain, Iran and Saudi Arabia all remain potential flash points which could boil over at any given point in time. Thus, the main issue now is whether the high price of oil could snuff out or help derail the burgeoning economic recovery in the US, which is gaining traction, as evidenced by yesterday’s key non-farm employment report.