Oil jumps in Asia on fears Gustav will hit Gulf

Oil prices jumped Friday in Asia to near $117 a barrel on expectations tropical storm Gustav will soon enter the Gulf of Mexico area, home to a quarter of U.S. crude supplies and 40 percent of its refining capacity.

Light, sweet crude for October delivery was up $1.35 at $116.94 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange by midday in Singapore. The contract fell $2.56 overnight to settle at $115.59 a barrel.

The tropical storm's center late Thursday was 15 miles west of Kingston, Jamaica after Gustav triggered floods, mudslides and falling trees that killed 59 people in Haiti and eight more in the Dominican Republic. Forecasters said it could strengthen into a hurricane before slamming into Grand Cayman on Friday night.

"Until this hurricane hits, the trend has to be higher toward the $120 level," said Jonathan Kornafel, Asia director for brokerage Hudson Capital Energy in Singapore. "If this turns out to be a non-event, the market could really come roaring back down."

Traders were also reacting to a report in Britian's Daily Telegraph, citing an unidentified business source, that Russia may cut oil supplies to Germany and Poland as early as this weekend in response to the threat of European Union sanctions over Russia's war with Georgia.

Meanwhile, oil companies are pulling employees off installations in the Gulf of Mexico area. Royal Dutch Shell PLC has evacuated nearly 400 people and said it would bring in another 270 Thursday.

The company said production will be affected. BP PLC was also removing personnel from the region, while Exxon Mobil said it was bracing its structures for heavy wind and rain.

Transocean Inc., the world's largest offshore drilling contractor, said Thursday it had evacuated about 190 workers from five of its 11 offshore drilling rigs in the Gulf. Transocean has 1,550 workers in the region.

Weather research firm Planalytics predicted as much as 80 percent of the Gulf's oil and gas production could be shut down as a precaution if Gustav enters the region as a major storm.

Forecasters said Gustav might slip between Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula and the western tip of Cuba on Sunday, then march toward a Tuesday collision with the U.S. Gulf Coast _ anywhere from south Texas to the Florida panhandle.

"It seems there will be at the very least a slight hit to production," Kornafel said. "But everything is up in the air until Monday or Tuesday."

Gustav is the first storm of the 2008 Atlantic hurricane season to pose a serious threat to offshore oil and gas installations in the Gulf. In 2005, Katrina and Rita destroyed 109 oil platforms and five drilling rigs.

In other Nymex trading, heating oil futures rose 0.53 cent to $3.267 a gallon, while gasoline prices gained 0.88 cent to $3.076 a gallon. Natural gas for October delivery fell 55.8 cents to settle at $8.05 per 1,000 cubic feet.

In London, October Brent crude rose $1.08 to $115.25 a barrel.