Crude oil rose above $60 a barrel for the first time in five weeks after an explosion shut down a California field owned by Occidental Petroleum Corp., the fourth- biggest U.S. oil company.

Occidental said about 120,000 barrels of oil and gas liquids a day has been lost after a fire at its Elk Hills site. It is the seventh-largest field on the U.S. mainland. Nigeria, Africa’s biggest oil producer, will comply with production cuts set by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and has no plan to increase that limit, a spokesman said.

“The reaction to the closure of the oil field in California underlines the supply worries out there,” said Michael Fitzpatrick, vice president for energy risk management at Fimat USA in New York. “The field only produces 120,000 barrels of liquids a day. It really isn’t going to have a noticeable impact of stocks.”

Crude oil for March delivery rose 69 cents, or 1.2 percent, to $60.40 a barrel at 1:12 p.m. on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Futures touched $60.61, the highest intraday price since Jan. 3. Prices are 2.3 percent higher this week and 3.5 percent lower than a year ago.

Nigeria, OPEC’s sixth-biggest producer, is set to cut 142,000 barrels under agreements reached with the oil cartel last year. News reports from Dow Jones and other organizations said the nation was planning to cut as much as 300,000 barrels a day in March.

`Nothing More’

“What we’re going to do is what OPEC has asked us to do,” Levi Ajuonuma, spokesman for Nigerian National Petroleum Corp., said in an interview from Abuja. “Nothing more.”

OPEC pledged to cut 500,000 barrels of oil a day from supplies starting this month, on top of a 1.2 million barrel-a- day reduction on Nov. 1.

“There have been a number of stories that demonstrate that oil supplies aren’t to be taken for granted,” said Tim Evans, an energy analyst at Citigroup Global Markets Inc. in New York. “The Occidental field was shut down yesterday, the Hibernia field in Canada is also shut, there are problems with the Cantarell field and Norwegian production is declining.”

Output at Exxon Mobil Corp.’s Hibernia field in Canada will be closed from mid-February for as much as four weeks as it undergoes its biggest maintenance program in five years, a company spokeswoman said Feb. 7.

Valve Failure

Production at the field, located offshore Newfoundland, has been hampered since Jan. 2, when a fuel valve failed in a generator and reduced power needed for production. Daily oil output in January averaged about 120,000 barrels, down from about 180,000 previously, the company said.

Petroleos Mexicanos, Mexico’s state-owned oil monopoly, expects production to drop 15 percent this year at Cantarell, the world’s third-largest oil field, said Chief Executive Officer Jesus Reyes Heroles on Feb. 7.

Output at Cantarell in the Gulf of Campeche will fall to 1.53 million barrels per day in 2007, said Reyes Heroles. Last year, Cantarell produced 1.79 million barrels per day, down 12 percent from the previous year as the field experiences falling underground pressure.

Norway dropped to fifth place among the world’s crude-oil exporters last year as the nation’s North Sea production declined, the Norwegian energy ministry said.

Cold Weather

Mild weather in December and early January helped push New York futures to $49.90 a barrel on Jan. 18, the lowest since May 25, 2005. The arrival of colder weather has helped drive prices higher this month.

Home-heating demand in the Northeast, the region responsible for 80 percent of U.S. heating-oil use, will be 23 percent above normal for the next week, said Weather Derivatives, a forecaster in Belton, Missouri. The National Weather Service predicted that below-normal temperatures will persist in the eastern half of the U.S. through Feb. 22.

Crude oil may fall next week on speculation U.S. fuel stockpiles are sufficient to meet heating demand during the remainder of winter. Seventeen of 48 analysts, traders and brokers, or 35 percent, said prices will decline, according to a Bloomberg News survey. Sixteen expected an increase and 15 forecast little change.

Brent crude oil for March settlement rose 17 cents, or 0.3 percent, to $59.20 a barrel on the London-based ICE Futures exchange.

To contact the reporter on this story: Mark Shenk in New York at mshenk1@bloomberg.net .

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