London (Platts)--30Nov2009/644 am EST/1144 GMT

Global crude futures were trading higher during European trading holding on to Asian gains following last week's broad selloff on Dubai's burgeoning debt troubles while a weaker dollar also boosted prices.

"It seems as though we've recovered from the bout of jitters following the Dubai led selloff," a crude broker said. "The weaker dollar is certainly helping crude which is now back in the familiar trading range."

At 11:20 GMT, the front month ICE Brent contract traded at $77.38/barrel, a $0.20 rise. The NYMEX WTI contract meanwhile traded at $76.28/b, a $0.23 rise. The WTI/Brent spread meanwhile traded at minus $1.10/b, firmly closing the door on a transatlantic arbitrage, sources said.

In the currency markets, the ICE Dollar index lost 0.320 points trading at 74.676 index points.

"The dollar is still being sold to support both equities and commodities, but as some of the oil economics are now starting to take a stronger footing the dollar needs to be sold to a deeper bottom to prevent a cross-asset correction before the end of the year," energy analyst Olivier Jakob said in a Petromatrix report.

"The only time we experienced such a low dollar was in the first half of last year and what followed was a recession of historic proportion," he said. "The dilemma now becomes how do you continue to sell the dollar to support the market price of equities and commodities without hurting the fundamentals of equities and commodities?"

--George Johnson, george_johnson@platts.com