High tide

Vienna, April 25 (Agencies): Crude futures rose today ahead of a meeting between US President George W. Bush and Saudi crown prince Abdullah that will focus in part on possible ways to bring down high oil prices.

Analysts said a rash of refinery outages in the United States and Venezuela underpinned the bullish market, along with stronger-than-expected stock draws on crude and a perception that neither producers nor oil companies were willing to go beyond present measures to bring prices down.

Light, sweet crude for June delivery on the New York Mercantile Exchange was up by 42 cents at $55.81 a barrel by late morning in Europe. Heating oil was up by nearly a penny at $1.5528 a gallon, while unleaded gasoline also rose by close to a cent to $1.6600 a gallon (3.8 litres).

In London, Brent crude was up 48 cents at $55.45 on the international petroleum exchange.

Bush has promised to press Abdullah during today's meeting in Texas to do more to help ease global oil prices. But he has acknowledged there may be little the Saudis can do in the short term.

As the world's top oil exporter and leading member of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec), Saudi Arabia now pumps about 9.5 million barrels daily.

Saudi oil minister Ali Naimi promised last week to increase production capacity from the current limit of 11 million barrels a day to 12.5 million barrels by 2009 and possibly 15 million barrels after that.

On Friday, oil jumped back above $55 a barrel as traders said sustained demand and refinery outages could strain US gasoline supplies ahead of peak summer motoring demand.

A spate of violence in West Asia also revived what dealers called a ?terror premium?, in which oil prices move higher on fears of potential attacks on energy infrastructure in the oil-rich region.

A hefty surplus in US crude oil inventories and signs that the Opec is boosting output again have done little to calm markets worried about insufficient transport and heating fuels to meet demand later this year. ?It?s a product-led market,? said Colin Tang, an oil trader with French investment bank Calyon in Singapore.?Physical crude is trading at big discounts to the major markers, which implies that there?s plenty of crude out there,? he added.