(Corrects WTI price in para 3 to $59.88 at 0836 GMT)
* Both contracts near 13-month highs
* Cold snap leaves 5 million in Texas and Mexico without
power
* Yemen Houthis launch drone attack on Saudi Arabia
* Norway wage deal averts oil and gas outages
By Shadia Nasralla
LONDON, Feb 16 (Reuters) - Oil prices hovered near 13-month
highs on Tuesday on the back of a cold snap shutting wells in
Texas, the the biggest crude producing state in the United
States, while a wage deal in Norway averted outages in Europe,
capping gains.
Prices also gained after Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthi group
said it had launched attacks on Saudi Arabia, raising supply
concerns in the world's biggest oil exporter, while
vaccine-driven optimism over a global economic recovery from the
COVID-19 pandemic also supported.
U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude CLc1 futures
gained 41 cents, or 0.7%, to $59.88 a barrel by 0836 GMT, after
touching their highest since early January 2020. U.S. markets
were closed on Monday because of a U.S. federal holiday.
Brent crude LCOc1 was down 7 cents, or 0.1%, at $63.23 a
barrel after hitting its highest since January 2020 in the
previous session.
The cold weather in the United States halted Texas oil wells
and refineries on Monday and forced restrictions on natural gas
and crude pipeline operators, leaving about 4 million homes and
businesses without power.
Texas produces roughly 4.6 million barrels of oil per day
and is home to 31 refineries, the most of any U.S. state,
according to Energy Information Administration data, including
some of the country's largest.
In the Middle East, the Saudi-led coalition fighting the
Houthis in Yemen said on Monday that it had intercepted and
destroyed an explosive-laden drone fired by the Houthis toward
the kingdom. The World Health Organization (WHO) on Monday listed
AstraZeneca (NASDAQ:AZN) AZN.L and Oxford University's COVID-19 vaccine for
emergency use, widening access to the relatively inexpensive
shot in the developing world. Capping prices gains, Norway's oil industry employers struck
a wage bargain with the Safe labour union on Tuesday, preventing
a strike at the Mongstad crude terminal and shutdowns of major
offshore oil and gas fields.