A sharp rally in world oil prices to near-record peaks stalled on Friday after OPEC-member Nigeria said the cartel may agree later this month to raise output to cool the red-hot market. U.S. light crude CLc1 settled up 21 cents to $53.78 a barrel, after dropping as low as $52.90 in open call trade. A rally that started at midweek had prices briefly within 50 cents of last October's $55.67 record. London Brent crude LCOc1 fell 15 cents to $51.80 a barrel after hitting $53.00 on Thursday, its highest price in 17 years of trade on the International Petroleum Exchange. Nigeria's presidential advisor on petroleum, Edmund Daukoru, told Reuters in an interview that members were eager to prevent high prices from damaging world economic growth and could agree to raise quotas or relax compliance. "I can see two potential outcomes: that discipline would be relaxed so everybody could really do close to their available potential, except Saudi Arabia. We may, on the other hand, take a definite increase in production, in quota," Daukoru said. OPEC will meet in Iran March 16. --More 2346 Local Time 2046 GMT
