Some oil pundits see crude hitting $140 or more

By Alex Lawler

LONDON (Reuters) - Oil prices, which last month hit a record high above $135 a barrel, will probably rise to $140 soon, the head of Libya's National Oil Corporation (NOC) said on Friday.

Investment bank Morgan Stanley, one of Wall Street's biggest energy traders, was even more bullish, saying on Friday that crude may reach $150 by July 4 due to robust Asian demand and falling inventories.

"The general trend is for the price to continue up and up," Shokri Ghanem, head of NOC, told Reuters in a telephone interview. "I think pretty soon it will reach $140."

The Morgan prediction helped send oil above $134 on Friday, bringing the market within sight of the all-time high of $135.09 reached on May 22. Oil has risen from $100, a once unthinkable price, in January.

"We are calling for a short-term spike in oil prices," Morgan Stanley analyst Ole Slorer said in a research note. "Middle East oil exports are stable, but Asia is taking an unprecedented share."

Both forecasts came a day after Benoit de Vitry, a managing director at Barclays Capital, said at the Reuters Energy Summit he expected to see oil at $150 this year, though that did not mean it would remain at that level.

Barclays has taken a consistently bullish view on commodities and especially on oil.

WEAK DOLLAR