Over the weekend of April 26-27, a refinery strike shut down a pipeline delivering a third of the production of the North Sea oil fields to refineries throughout the United Kingdom causing the per barrel price of oil to open at $120 on Monday, April 28.

Employees at the Grangemouth refinery located in central Scotland staged a walk-out for 48 hours, which in turn caused the Forties Pipeline System to shut down. The pipeline channels in excess of 700,000 barrels of oil per day. After the abbreviated strike ends on Tuesday, it is expected to take up to a week for the refinery to return to full capacity although the pipeline should return to operation in 24 hours.

At the same time, the retail price of gasoline in the United States hit a record level for the 13th time, with regular unleaded selling for $3.603 according to data compiled by AAA.

Events in Nigeria, where the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta has attacked four pipelines in the past week belonging to Royal Dutch Shell PLC, are further complicating the global oil and gas situation.

Victor Shum, an analyst on energy with Singapore-based Purvin and Gertz was quoted in an article on CNN Money. "We've really got a confluence of a number of events that have really disrupted crude oil supply. That's what's driving oil to a new record even though the U.S. dollar actually strengthened a bit."