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1st LD Writethru: Oil prices rally amid geopolitical worries

Xinhua, March 27, 2015 Adjust font size:

Oil prices jumped Thursday amid geopolitical tensions in the Middle East.

Oil prices spiked after Saudi Arabia and its allies launched air strikes on Yemen early Thursday.

Yemen's President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi has fled his palace in Aden Wednesday as oil production giant Saudi Arabia, which shares border with Yemen, launched strikes against Huthi rebels in a bid to help the Yemeni government. The geopolitical worries overshadowed the crude supply.

U.S. crude production reached 9.422 million barrels a day last week, the highest level since 1983, according to Energy Information Administration (EIA), the Energy Department's statistical arm.

American crude supplies increased 8.2 million barrels to 466.7 million, 84.2 million barrels more than a year earlier. Meanwhile, inventories at Cushing, Oklahoma, the delivery point for the contract, gained 1.9 million barrels to 56.3 million barrels.

Light, sweet crude for May delivery gained 2.22 U.S. dollars to settle at 51.43 U.S. dollars a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, while Brent crude for May delivery moved up 2.71 dollars to close at 59.19 dollars a barrel. Endite