February crude settled $1.33 up at $28.02 a barrel at 1300EST/1800 GMT on a shortened session on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Minutes earlier, it hit a session high of $28.10.

These price levels by far exceeded the November 22, 1999, high of $27.15, a level unseen since the 1991 Gulf War. The last leg of Friday's spectacular rally, which brings this week's gains to more than $2.50 a barrel, followed an announcement from the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries' (Opec) ministerial monitoring committee that it strongly recommends extending the output curbs.

"In light of the continuing market volatility and the remaining high stock levels all those present in the meeting agreed to strongly recommend to the conference the extension of the current agreement," acommunique issued after the committee's meeting in Vienna said.

"The communique, that's what got us this last push. It is more official sounding news compared with the earlier comments from individual ministers," said Chris Schachte of GSC Energy.

"We've seen OPEC remarks all week fuel gains...There was fund buying earlier in the week and they stayed in and that's why we did not go any lower today," Schachte added, commenting on expectations of some late profit-taking.

Friday's rally began after Iranian oil minister Bijan Zanganeh said he expected the one-year cuts deal, which expires in March, will be extended until September. "We believe it is necessary that the cuts should be rolled over and continued until September," he said on arrival in Vienna for OPEC's ministerial monitoring committee meeting. But traders said sentiment was boosted also by Venezuelan oil minister Ali Rodriguez's remark that Caracas had requested Financial assistance from OPEC after mudslides last month that killed thousands inhis country. He said the assistance would not involve any extra oil output allocation for Venezuela.

Venezuela, a key exporter of crude within OPEC, had helped create the supply cuts but Rodriguez has also caused some jitters in oil circles early this year by citing unofficial talk that his country may be allowed to lift production to help pay for the billions of dollars in flood damage. "The comments by Venezuela, that they will borrow money helped very much. They were (previously) talking about increasing production, but now it seems they're keeping (OPEC) unity," said an oil trader with ABN AMRO.

Zanganeh said afterwards he believed OPEC members were unanimous in supporting a six month extension of their cuts. But the communique made no mention of the duration of an extension. Zanganeh said the issue will be cleared at another meeting of the monitoring committee in March.

Rodriguez said only the curbs should be maintained as long as oil market conditions remain as they are now. Kuwait's Oil MinisterSheikhh Saud al-Sabah said he believed oil producers were agreed on the need to prolong the curbs but added there was still indecision over how long the limits should be kept.

The three oil ministers were meeting in Vienna to examine Opec adherence to the supply curbs which withdrew 4.32 million BPD of supply from world markets and are due to expire at the end of March. OPEC ministers hold a conference in Vienna on March 27. In London, IPE Brent crude oil futures also shot to a strong close but lagged behind Nymex as the International Petroleum Exchange could not react to the OPEC communique which was issued five minutes after that exchange closed.