London (Platts)--11Jan2010/724 am EST/1224 GMT

Crude futures hit 15-month highs in European morning trading Monday as a weaker US dollar and buoyant stock markets helped push the Brent and WTI crude benchmarks to fresh highs, sources said.

"The market seems again to be concentrating on the economic indicators," a market source said, noting that "although supplies of oil are lower than previously due to the cold spell, they remain very high."

"I have heard that this cold weather spell has not spurred the demand for oil as much as people expected. So a tentatively strong market at present," the source said, adding that the trend could be "reversed very quickly should the economic indicators turn around."

At 11:30 GMT, the front-month ICE Brent contract traded at $82.45/b, the highest since October 9, 2008. The NYMEX WTI benchmark traded at $83.95/b, the highest since October 14, 2008. Both contracts were around $1.15 higher from Friday's settle.

In the currency markets, the ICE Dollar Index traded at its lowest level in more than three weeks at 76.876, down 0.598 from Friday's close.

"Technically, although we remain overbought in crude, the fact that prices in most complexes have broken out of their trading ranges suggests that technical buying will remain intact for a little longer," energy analyst Edward Meir of MF Global said in a report.

Technically, both the ICE Brent and NYMEX WTI five-day moving averages continued to trade comfortably above the eight-day moving average line, suggesting short-term momentum.

The short-term strength has been a prevalent characteristic of the crude futures market for around three weeks, facilitating a flat-price move which has seen both benchmarks gain in excess of $10/barrel.

--George Johnson, george_johnson@platts.com