Oil shoots toward $92 on supply snags, U.S. chill

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Oil prices vaulted more than three dollars toward $92 a barrel on Friday amid supply snags in Nigeria, the North Sea and as dealers anticipated a cold spell in the huge U.S. Northeast heating oil market.

U.S. crude jumped $3.64 to $91.75 a barrel by 1740 GMT, reversing most of the week's losses that had been triggered by concern an economic slowdown would dent demand for fuel. London Brent gained $3.55 to $92.06.

"A lot of people with short positions are running away from them, respecting the potential of this market to run back up," said Tim Evans, energy analyst at Citigroup Futures Research in New York.

Royal Dutch Shell said 130,000 barrels of daily crude oil production from Nigeria was halted because of pipeline leaks, adding to outages in supply from the OPEC country caused by militant attacks.

Meanwhile, dealers said they were concerned about supplies from Britain's North Sea fields, which have been hit by recent weather-related platform shutdowns.

Adding support temperatures were expected to fall over the weekend in the U.S. Northeast, sparking expectations of a jump in fuel consumption in the world's biggest heating oil market, dealers said.

The snags come against the backdrop of continued OPEC production restrictions and recent comments from some members in the group that it may agree to cut production at the next scheduled meeting in March.

"We are up on the Nigerian force majeure, weather disruptions in the North Sea, OPEC comments about cutting production, cold weather over the weekend, and a follow-through from yesterday's technical bounce." said Tom Knight, vice president of supply and trading at Truman Arnold.

Oil has tracked gyrations in the stock markets in recent weeks and markets across Europe and the United States were up on Friday.