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LONDON : Oil prices rebounded on Friday as Tropical Storm Gustav risked becoming a hurricane once more, threatening key US energy production and refinery facilities in the Gulf of Mexico, traders said.
New York's main contract, light sweet crude for delivery in October, jumped 1.82 dollars to 117.41 dollars per barrel, after bouncing above 120 dollars in intra-day trade on Thursday.
London's Brent North Sea crude for October gained 1.48 dollars to 115.65 dollars on Friday.
Deadly Tropical Storm Gustav thrashed Jamaica on Friday and was on track to crash into Cuba as a hurricane after leaving up to 78 people dead in the Dominican Republic, Haiti and Jamaica.
Gustav could become a "major hurricane" before reaching western Cuba over the weekend, the US National Hurricane Center warned.
"Tropical Storm Gustav was back in focus, despite reassurances from the IEA (International Energy Agency) and the US Department for Energy that they were ready to tap into emergency oil reserves in case the storm causes significant supply disruptions in the Gulf of Mexico," Sucden analyst Andrey Kryuchenkov said.
"The focus is likely to remain on Tropical Storm Gustav and potential supply disruptions during the weekend and earlier next week," he added.
British oil group BP, Anglo-Dutch giant Shell and US rival ConocoPhillips had Thursday evacuated workers from their installations in the Gulf of Mexico as the deadly storm loomed.
ExxonMobil said it was preparing for the storm and "identifying personnel for possible evacuation to shore."
About a quarter of US crude oil installations are located in the Gulf of Mexico.
Oil prices had closed sharply lower on Thursday as traders discounted the threat of the storm but on Friday, Newedge energy analyst Ken Hasegawa warned: "We (still) have to worry about the hurricane's effect on this market."
Jamaica woke Friday to a trail of devastation and reports that the storm killed as many as 11 people on the island as it moved toward the west, triggering flash floods and heavy rains.
Maximum sustained winds slowed to 100 kilometres (65 miles) per hour early Friday. Around 1,500 people crammed into shelters to wait out the storm, which moved to the western side of the island early Friday.
Anxiety also grew on the US Gulf Coast on the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and authorities in New Orleans were planning a possible mandatory evacuation to prevent a repeat of the devastation and deaths wreaked in 2005.
Authorities in Louisiana and Mississippi have already declared states of emergency before Gustav's expected landfall late Monday as a hurricane.
Gustav had made landfall in Haiti on Tuesday as a Category One hurricane -- the lowest on the five-level Saffir-Simpson scale -- before weakening into a tropical storm.
Meanwhile, the eighth tropical storm of the hurricane season, dubbed Hanna, was churning in the Atlantic on Friday and has the potential to become a hurricane.
- AFP /ls
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