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Light, sweet crude for August delivery rose 61 cents to $70.18 a barrel by midday in European electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. August Brent crude on the ICE Futures exchange in London rose 71 cents to $71.20 a barrel.
The Nymex crude contract had settled 60 cents higher at $69.57 a barrel on Thursday in the U.S. after rising as high as $70.52 and trading above $70 for several hours
-- the first time it did so in the past 10 months.
Thursday's jump was driven by concerns over summer supplies following the release of a weekly U.S. government report that showed gasoline inventories dropped unexpectedly as the driving season neared its peak. Oil prices pulled back late in Thursday's session as traders locked in profits after prices penetrated $70, analysts said.
The U.S. Energy Department's Energy Information Administration said Wednesday that gasoline inventories dropped 700,000 barrels in the week ended June 22. Analysts polled by Dow Jones Newswires had expected a 1.1-million-barrel gain.
The EIA report also showed that crude oil supplies rose 1.6 million barrels to 350.9 million barrels last week, above the average estimate of a 1 million barrel increase. Refinery utilization rebounded 1.8 percentage points to 89.4 percent, higher than estimates of a gain of 0.8 percentage points.
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 The weekly petroleum supply snapshot has been watched closely during a spring and early summer during which an unusually high number of refinery outages have led to high gasoline futures prices and record prices at the pump.
In Vienna, PVM Oil Associates noted that the end of peak refinery maintenance in mid-June should lead to "a significant reduction of planned maintenance in the U.S. ... in the third quarter," that in turn could result in higher crude prices because of increased output.
Natural gas prices rose 2 cents to $6.675 per 1,000 cubic feet. The contract plummeted 42.8 cents to settle at $6.655 per 1,000 cubic feet Thursday after a government report showed natural gas inventories rose by 99 billion cubic feet last week, more than analysts expected.
Heating oil futures rose 1.74 cents to $2.0357 a gallon.
[Associated Press;
by George Jahn]
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