Crude oil futures settled higher Thursday as a refinery fire in Louisiana rekindled supply fears.

On the New York Mercantile Exchange, light, sweet crude oil futures for September delivery rose 83 cents to end at 59.94 dollars a barrel. Meanwhile, on London's International Petroleum Exchange, the September Brent crude-oil futures contract climbed 75 cents to close at 58.76 dollars per barrel.

On Thursday, a fire shut down Murphy Oil Corp's diesel fuel unit at its 120,000-barrel-a-day Meraux refinery. A spokeswoman at Murphy's headquarters said that damage to the unit was minimal, but offered no estimate of when it might restart.

In early trading, oil prices were nearly flat, but the refinery fire sent them above 60 dollars a barrel for the first time in more than two weeks. However, Traders were divided on whether Thursday's gains would see much follow-through buying Friday, as US commercial petroleum stocks remained above normal levels.

Source: Xinhua