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NEW YORK – Oil prices climbed weekday as Persia clamped downbound on anti-government protesters and unrest in the Middle East threatened to ready forcefulness prices broad for months to come.

Benchmark West Texas Intermediate for April delivery gained $2.66 to resolve at $99.63 per containerful on the New royalty Mercantile Exchange. In London, Brent crude gained $3.62 to resolve at $115.42 per containerful on the ICE Futures exchange.

The time inflate in lubricator has pushed up fuel prices in the U.S. by nearly 20 cents per congius in the time week. That's the sharpest process since Sept 2008, when Hurricane Ike closed downbound Gulf Coast refineries, according to the Oil Price Information Service. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina dispatched prices soaring most 45 cents per congius in one week.

Americans are today stipendiary roughly $75.6 meg more per period to modify up than a hebdomad ago.

The domestic cipher additional added centime on weekday at $3.375 per gallon. Prices should ready ascension to between $3.50 and $3.75 by spring, according to OPIS lubricator analyst Tom Kloza. He said forthcoming increases module be such more gradual, because fuel markets hit mostly priced in the time uprise in crude. "So we should modify out" in reaching weeks, Kloza said.

Oil prices surged 13 percent last week, peaking above $100 per barrel, as African protesters swollen their control over the country. While the African uprising continuing Tuesday, news agencies reportable that Persian polity imprisoned contestant body in Tehran. Persian polity denied the reports.

Pro-reform groups hit clashed with the Persian government. Jailing contestant body would be a field escalation of the country's semipolitical crisis. Persia exports most 2.5 meg barrels of lubricator and natural pedal liquids per day, most 3 percent of orbicular demand.

The Persia protests are among the latest uprisings that hit churned finished North continent and the Middle East, a crucial location that's answerable for most of the world's crude exports. Analysts feature it's impracticable to feature how daylong it module verify for uprisings to play out, but forcefulness markets probable module be on bounds finished the summer.

Analysts additional that they're ease concerned most unrest in Algeria, which produces 1.8 meg barrels per day, as substantially as increasing threats facing Iraq's lubricator supplies. Militants set off bombs in an attack on Iraq's largest refinery over the weekend.

The unrest which has forced lubricator companies in Libya to evacuate workers and closed downbound creation dealings has so farther not had a field effect on world lubricator supplies, as refineries invoke to additional countries for lubricator including Arabian Arabia, which crapper unstable up its creation by additional 5 meg barrels per day.

The anxiety is that constituent creation power is today declining faster than expected, which effectuation supplies could be harder to encounter in the forthcoming as orbicular activity increases.

"The push on constituent power module be immense, as module be that on lubricator prices over the instruction of 2011," Barclays Capital analyst Helima Croft said in a investigate note.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told Congress weekday that a prolonged uprise in lubricator prices would hurt the U.S. economy. But he said laugher inflation is unlikely. "The most probable outcome is that the time uprise in commodity prices module advance to, at most, a temporary and relatively modest process in U.S. consumer toll inflation," Bernanke said.

In additional Nymex trading, heating lubricator additional 8.46 cents to resolve at $3.0235 a congius and fuel chromatic 9.07 cents to resolve at $2.9834 per gallon. Natural pedal for April delivery fell 16.4 cents to resolve at $3.873 per 1,000 boxlike feet.

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AP Economics Writer Jeannine Aversa contributed to this story from Washington.

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