Oil climbed above $53 a barrel on Thursday on Texas refinery outages and worries about supply.

Short-term outages occurred at a gas unit of BP’s big Texas City plant and a fire at Western Refining Co.’s refinery in El Paso, a significant event before the spring season when the consumption of gasoline naturally rises.

The oil futures traded at to $53.08 a barrel, another four-week high.

OPEC’s acting Secretary-General Adnan Shihab-Eldin sparked worries on Thursday that crude could shoot to $80 a barrel in the next two years on supply disruptions.

"I can stress that the probability that the price of a barrel of crude rises to $80 in the near future is a low probability," he said. "However, I can’t rule out the rise of a barrel of oil to $80 in the coming two years."

The prices were propped up by the influx of speculative money into the industry as large funds keep investing their money in commodities amid a sharp decline in the value of the dollar.