LONDON, Sept. 27--World oil prices raced to record high levels approaching $50 per barrel on Monday as unrest in oil producers Nigeria and Saudi Arabia stoked supply worries, traders said.
In New York the price of light sweet crude for November delivery climbed to an all-time high of $49.52 per barrel in pre-opening electronic trading ahead of formal pit deals, AFP reported.
The contract rose 64 cents from Friday's closing price to exceed the previous record peak of $49.40 per barrel reached on August 20.
The price of reference Brent North Sea crude oil for delivery in November, meanwhile, rose 92 cents to hit a record peak of $46.25 in London.
Oil prices soared to new summits after two oil majors in Nigeria evacuated non-essential workers from the troubled Niger Delta oil region and as police clashed with suspected militants in Saudi Arabia's capital Riyadh at the weekend.

ISTANBUL, Turkey, Sept. 27--A major Islamic finance forum was launched here Monday with calls to introduce new Sharia-compliant investment products and to eye US, European and Far East markets.
"We need new approaches and instruments to meet consumer demands of Muslims and to spread to Europe, the United States and the Far East," Ufuk Uyan, president of special finance houses (Islamic banks) in Turkey, told the opening session.
Some 60 Muslim scholars, academics, bankers and investors from 20 countries are due to address around 400 participants from 40 countries during the three-day International Islamic Finance Forum on issues related to the multibillion-dollar Islamic finance industry.
The forum, the sixth of its kind and the second in Istanbul, is to address urgent issues on Islamic financial laws, regulations, new Islamic financial and investment products and other issues.
Islamic Sharia law imposes a series of restrictions on banks, including a ban on charging interest for loans and prohibiting clients' money from being invested in activities linked to alcohol, gambling and pornography.
To deal with the no-interest rule, Islamic financial institutions with the help of religious scholars, have introduced several products based on the concept of profit-and-loss partnership.
The notion of Sharia-approved finance first emerged in Egypt at the start of the 1960s, and was developed over the past three decades in the oil-rich Arab states of Persian Gulf.
Speakers at the opening session raised a number of questions highlighting disputes and conflicting interpretations of Islamic law and methods of its application to financing.
"Fatwas (religious edict) vary by time, place and circumstances," said Mahmoud el-Gamal, economics professor at Rice University, Texas, and who was recently appointed by the US Treasury Department as its first scholar-in-residence on Islamic finance.
Organized by the Dubai-based Institute for International Research in association with Dow Jones Indexes, the forum is held twice a year in Dubai and Istanbul respectively.

KARACHI, Pakistan, Sept. 27--Pakistani security forces arrested more suspected Islamic militants a day after they shot dead a key suspect wanted in a failed bid on President Pervez Musharraf's life and the killing of US journalist Daniel Pearl.
Security forces shot dead Amjad Hussain Farooqi, described as one of the principal members of Al-Qaeda in Pakistan, in a gun battle on Sunday afternoon in the southern city of Nawabshah, Reuters reported.
"We've eliminated one of the very major sources of terrorist threat," Musharraf told reporters during an official visit to the Netherlands.
"Not only was he involved in the attacks on me, but also in attacks elsewhere and terrorist attacks elsewhere in the country. So a very big terrorist has been eliminated."
Security forces besieged Farooqi's hideout in Nawabshah, after a phone tap operation confirmed his presence. Two Pakistani companions were captured and are under interrogation.
Brigadier Javed Cheema, an interior ministry official, said subsequent arrests were made in several parts of the country.
Police sources said at least three men were detained in the Sindh town of Sukkar, around 400 km (240 miles) north of Karachi.
Farooqi, who had a price of 20 million rupees ($338,000) on his head, was considered the main Pakistani planner of two failed assassination bids on Musharraf, including a suicide assault on his motorcade on Dec. 25 last year that killed 15 people and wounded 45.
Farooqi was also one of seven men wanted in the 2002 kidnapping and slaying of Pearl, a Wall Street Journal reporter.

CRAWFORD, Texas, Sept. 27--US President George W. Bush says "all options are on the table" for making sure Iran dismantles its nuclear program, and that Washington will never let Tehran acquire atomic weapons".
"My hope is that we can solve this diplomatically," Bush said in a three-part interview with Fox News Channel's "O'Reilly Factor" program, excerpts of which were made public on Sunday, AFP reported.
"Let me try to solve it diplomatically first," said Bush. "All options are on the table, of course, in any situation. But diplomacy is the first option."
The Bush administration has charged that oil-rich Iran does not need a civilian nuclear program for energy and that Tehran is actually seeking to acquire nuclear weapons.
Asked whether the United States would let Iran develop that capability, Bush replied: "No, we've made it clear, our position is that they won't have a nuclear weapon." "We are working our hearts out so that they don't develop a nuclear weapon, and the best way to do so is to continue to keep international pressure on them," he said.
Iran appealed Sunday for a negotiated settlement to its standoff with the UN atomic energy watchdog but showed no inclination to abide by a resolution calling for an immediate halt to its sensitive nuclear activities.
"No negotiations with the Americans are on the agenda, but we call on the Europeans to discuss with us," Iran's Foreign Ministry Spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told reporters.
Iran is under threat of being hauled before the UN Security Council over its nuclear program.
In a resolution passed on September 18, the International Atomic Energy Agency called on Iran to halt its uranium enrichment-related activities, a part of the nuclear fuel cycle that can be directed to both energy and weapons purposes.