Ultimately, a battle for market influence between geopolitical factors and the flow of U.S. data is likely to be settled in favor of the former.

There has been poor performance so far this year in the North Sea. The United States certainly is not coming back as quickly as people thought it would and Russia has been very, very poor, partly due to the cold weather.

The market's had a crack at $60 several times recently, but not looked at all convincing below that level. I just don't think there's the appetite to push it down there.

The market has given its verdict: it's going to be above $60 for quite a long time.

It's clear that the safety of employees is the main concern for the companies involved in Nigeria, and that does suggest that the current lost production could be sustained.

The 6.0-dollar rise in prices over the past three weeks seems to have been enough to rule out the possibility of an output cut this week.

January has been very strong for crude and although February has grown less quickly, the overall picture for apparent consumption looks like it's probably roughly on-track.

Car sales have been strong, the economy is still growing strongly and it seems to me very unlikely that in that environment you would get two consecutive years where oil demand doesn't really grow.

The concern over gasoline availability coming into the second quarter is helping to keep crude oil markets relatively firm.