•Crude futures moved higher Friday, pulled up by continued concern over declining US product stocks as well as the underlying situation in Nigeria. Market players also noted that as it is the end of the first half of 2007, some trading groups and hedge funds were locking in profits to present to the client base and this has caused a further small artificial rise in prices.

•At 10:19 London time, August ICE Brent was stabilizing above $70/barrel, up 10 cents to $70.63/b. August NYMEX WTI acted in tandem, increasing 21 cents to $69.18/barrel, failing for another session to climb above the psychologically important $70/b mark. However, with neither Brent nor WTI really managing to hold pace with market maker heating oil on Wednesday and Brent lagging behind WTI, Brent's premium over WTI narrowed further to $1.45/b, the lowest since March

•At 10:32 GMT August ICE Brent traded at $71.25/barrel, up 73 cents whilst August WTI on NYMEX and ICE changed hands at $70.27/b, up 70 cents. Despite refinery utilization still at reasonably low levels, WTI crude futures have been pulled up by declining product stocks, tightening the WTI-Brent spread and shifting the intermonth WTI spreads.

•On Thursday the August/September spread flipped into backwardation briefly at plus 7 cents before settling at minus 34 cents contango. The front-month WTI-Brent futures spread settled Thursday at minus 95 cents, the highest level since late March 2007.

•Stocks at Cushing, Oklahoma, home of the NYMEX delivery point, fell 1.4 million barrels the week ending June 22, to 24.1 million barrels, the lowest level in three months, according to data from the Energy Information Administration.

Updated: June 29, 2007