AFP, Singapore :
Oil prices rose in Asia Tuesday on growing concerns about lawlessness in crude-producer Libya as a top military unit joined a renegade general’s bid to quash Islamists and edged the country closer to civil war.
The US benchmark, West Texas Intermediate (WTI) for delivery in June, rose 12 cents to $102.73 in afternoon trade, while Brent North Sea crude for July rose 16 cents to $109.53.
“Further unrest in Libya is the main factor in the oil market at the moment,” David Lennox, resource analyst at Fat Prophets in Sydney, told AFP.
Colonel Wanis Abu Khamada, respected commander of an elite Libyan army unit, announced Monday that his troops would join retired general Khalifa Haftar’s operation targeting Islamist militias in Benghazi.
The Libyan interim government meanwhile has called on the country’s parliament to “take a recess” amid widening lawlessness.
