London (Platts)--22Feb2011/458 am EST/958 GMT

Global crude futures were up Tuesday morning in Europe as turmoil and protests continued to rock Libya, affecting the OPEC member's oil production.

At 0930 GMT, front-month April ICE Brent crude futures were $107.64/barrel, up $1.89/b from the 1800 GMT close on Monday. Front-month March NYMEX crude futures were $93.62/b at 0930 GMT, up $7.42/b from Friday's close. The US market was closed for a public holiday Monday.

Apart from surges late Monday and early Tuesday, these levels have not been seen since September and October 2008, respectively.

On Monday, al-Jazeera television reported that crude production at Libya's Nafoora oil field had stopped because of a strike by workers, hours after a tribal leader warned that oil exports from the OPEC member would be halted unless Muammar Qadhafi ordered an end to the violent suppression of nationwide protests. It was not possible to verify the report independently.

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One North Sea trader said that further outages were likely, hence the stronger outright price. "It's all a bit vague but everyone thinks there are more outages -- flat-price is up about $2/b and spreads are up," he said.

While the WTI contract was trading in steepening contango ahead of the front-month contract's expiry and current stock levels at Cushing, Oklahoma, putting pressure on the front end of the curve, the Brent market was trading in slight backwardation, reversing the recent contango trend on the back of short covering.

At 0930 GMT the April/May Brent market was at a backwardation of $0.04/b, having been as wide as $0.10/b earlier in the session.

"The market is very politics sensitive, which has caught a few people out. It's a knee jerk reaction to what's going on in Libya," a crude futures broker said.

He added that the fluctuations in the Brent structure were all the more pronounced due to reduced liquidity seen typically during the International Petroleum week in London.

The global petroleum complex was also up on the unrest in Libya, with ICE March gasoil futures at $894.75/mt, up $17.50/mt at 0930 GMT, while NYMEX heating oil was $2.8380/gal, up 378 points. At the same time, NYMEX RBOB futures were $2.6704/gal, up 494 points.

--Benno Spencer, benno_spencer@platts.com