Oil prices held above $51 a barrel today as Opec's president said the cartel will keep pumping near full tilt to ignore its system of formal production quotas.
US light crude was up 14 cents to $51.10 a barrel; London Brent crude gained 59 cents to $51.36.
Prices are barely $7 below record peaks struck last month, even though OPEC producers have ramped up output to build a cushion of oil stocks ahead of an expected fourth quarter demand surge.
"I think now we are dealing with the production without the quotas," said Kuwaiti oil minister Sheikh Ahmad al-Fahd al-Sabah, also Opec president. Opec, which controls half the world's crude exports, meets again on June 15th in Vienna to chart production strategy for the second half of the year.
Only Saudi Arabia now holds significant spare production capacity. Saudi officials said the kingdom last month pumped just over 9.5 million barrels per day (bpd) - leaving spare capacity of 1.5 million bpd versus official capacity of 11 million.
Industry sources expect Riyadh to raise output still further in May.
Opec's production surge has helped push US crude stocks to 327 million barrels, their highest level in nearly six years.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission said speculators had cut their net-long positions on the New York Mercantile Exchange for the week ended May 3rd to 8,403 from 26,008 in the previous week.