By Surabhi Sahu Crude-oil futures rose Monday, buoyed by hopes of positive policy action from China's central bank and renewed tensions in the Middle East due to a possible escalation in the Israel-Iran conflict. On the New York Mercantile Exchange, light, sweet crude futures for delivery in September traded at $93.09 a barrel at 0641 GMT, up $0.22 in the Globex electronic session. September Brent crude on London's ICE Futures exchange rose $0.46 to $113.41 a barrel. China's trade surplus for the month of July dropped to $25.1 billion from $31.7 billion in June, falling way short of estimates for a surplus of $35.2 billion in a Dow Jones Newswires survey of economists. Despite the bearish economic data out of China, equities and the euro posted only modest losses, partially on the assumption that the weak Chinese trade data could further encourage some form of economic stimulus within the country, Jim Ritterbusch at Ritterbusch and Associates said late Friday. "The North Sea oil field maintenance is restricting availability of North Sea crudes that comprise the Brent basket. And with the huge Buzzard Field maintenance looming, some further tightening could be forthcoming," Mr. Ritterbusch said. Middle East tensions will also be a key theme in the coming weeks, traders said. The Israeli army Sunday began testing a nationwide text messaging system for warning the public of an imminent missile attack as chatter over a possible military strike on Iran dominated Israeli headlines. Renewed fears of further supply disruptions from Iran will likely underpin Brent crude, a Tokyo based-trader said, forecasting the European benchmark to edge toward $116 a barrel in the coming sessions. "We see the medium-term crude-oil price risks as being to the upside mainly due to strong [emerging-market] demand growth, lack of spare capacity and constraints on non-OPEC supply," Barclays Capital said in a research note Friday, forecasting Brent to average $117 a barrel in the fourth quarter of 2012, up from the third quarter forecast of $107 a barrel. Concerns that typhoons and hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico could destabilize oil rigs and pipelines, hurting supplies, is also bullish for prices, a Singapore-based trader said, tipping immediate resistance for Nymex crude at $95 a barrel. Nymex reformulated gasoline blendstock for September--the benchmark gasoline contract--rose 125 points to $3.0164 a gallon, while September heating oil traded at $3.0205, unchanged. ICE gasoil for September changed hands at $955.75 a metric ton, up $0.75 from Friday's settlement. Write to Surabhi Sahu at surabhi.sahu@dowjones.com

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