Oil touches $60

Oil for August delivery touched $60 a barrel for a second day Friday on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract traded at $59.79 at 11:27 a.m. in Singapore in after-hours electronic trading. Oil has risen 58% in a year and gained 21% in the past month.

Crude oil prices are more likely to rise than fall next week on speculation increasing fuel demand will sap U.S. inventories, a Bloomberg survey shows.

Twenty-four of 50 analysts and strategists surveyed, or 48%, said oil prices will rise next week. Sixteen, or 32% said they will fall, and 10 forecast little change.

U.S. crude oil stockpiles have dropped three weeks in a row, raising concern suppliers are failing to match the needs of refiners to make gasoline for summer travel and stockpile heating oil for next winter. Demand for oil products in the past four weeks was 1.7% higher than a year earlier, according to the U.S. Energy Department.