SINGAPORE: Oil prices rose on Monday as Asian markets opened strongly into a holiday-shortened week and consensus spread that Brent crude futures would likely remain above $60 for the rest of the year.
MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan extended gains and was up 1.1 percent. Japan's Nikkei stock average erased early gains and was flat ahead of a Japanese public holiday, though Australian shares surged 1.6 percent.
Brent climbed more than a dollar to over $62.46 per barrel but gave up some gains to trade up 78 cents at $62.16 by 0447 GMT.
US crude was up 70 cents at $57.83 a barrel.
Although analysts said prices would likely remain over $60 barrel for the rest of the year, they also said that further large price jumps were unlikely.
"Any oil relief rally is likely to be limited and short-lived, barring a major outage. We see too many headwinds that must be addressed," Morgan Stanley said on Monday in a report.
"An oversupplied market is likely to keep crude oil prices under pressure in the first half of 2015, while demand struggles to recover in Asia," ANZ said in a report, also on Monday.
Reuters technical analyst Wang Tao said that Brent prices would receive support at $60.77 a barrel and that they were trending up towards a target of $63.52 per barrel.
Analysts also said they expected relatively low price volatility for the remainder of the year as traders begin to wind down their 2014 positions.
"With dealing desks having to close their books, traders going on holidays and a lack of key economic news from around the globe, we do not expect much volatility from now till January 2015," Singapore-based Phillip Futures said.
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