Price of Crude Oil Rises Above $50 a Barrel for First Time

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he price of crude oil in New York exceeded a record $50 a barrel on Tuesday as Nigerian rebels threatened oil output and U.S. Gulf of Mexico supplies remained almost a third below normal, Bloomberg reported.

After rising as high as $50.47 during the session, crude oil for November delivery closed at a record $49.88 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange on Tuesday. Oil futures were up 77% from a year earlier.

In London, the November Brent crude-oil futures contract reached $46.80 a barrel, the highest price since the contract began trading in 1988.

Royal Dutch/Shell Group said its Nigerian venture closed a pumping station and evacuated staff at oil installations in the Niger River delta due to the recent unrest, Bloomberg reported.

And oil output in the Gulf was down 29%, or 490,493 barrels, due to struggles related to Hurricane Ivan, according to government figures. Ivan, which made landfall on the Alabama coast on Sept. 16, returned as a tropical storm last week.

Also Tuesday, Saudi Arabia, the world's largest oil exporter, said it planned to soon boost its oil production capacity to 11 million barrels a day from 10.5 million barrels a day.