NEW YORK (AP) — Crude oil futures gained nearly $2 Monday, settling 5.8 percent higher with the highest penny-for-penny gain since Oct. 12, 2000, in a rally inspired by refinery problems amidrecord-low crude oil inventories.

Light, sweet March crude oil futures settled up $1.93 at $34.98 a barrel after touching a high of $35.05.

On Oct. 12, 2000, al-Qaida terrorists bombed the USS Cole off the coast of Yemen, killing 17 American sailors and injuring 33. On the same day, Israeli helicopter gunships bombed PLO leader Yasser Arafat’s headquarters in Ramallah. Crude oil futures gained $2.81 a barrel that day.

With warmer weather in the Northeast, the highest heating oil consuming region in the world, investor focus appears to have shifted from heating oil supply concerns to crude oil and gasoline supply worries, analysts said.

“The weather will change, but until we get crude oil stocks higher, the bulls may be able to keep this market moving,” said Peter Beutel, an analyst with Cameron Hanover in New Canaan, Conn.

Analysts said large speculators such as commodity hedge funds saw the refinery problems as a reason to jump back in and take positions betting again on prices rising, causing those who’d thought prices would continue lower to have to cover as well.

“It’s like hitting a riptide,” Beutel said. “The market’s got different crosscurrents. One’s going to take control one day, then the other will have sway another day.”

He said how much farther prices can rise based on low crude inventories may depend on how much longer crude in storage remains at historic lows.

“It has been the one constant factor in this market that has been there throughout the advance,” he said.

Crude oil futures averaged $34.32 a barrel in January, the highest-ever average price for the month in the contract’s 21-year history.

On London’s International Petroleum Exchange, March Brent blend crude oil futures settled up $1.05 at $30.23 a barrel.

Analysts and traders said funds, which had been seen selling last week as crude prices fell 5.4 percent to $33.05 a barrel last week, bought back March crude futures — widening the spread between the price of March crude futures versus April crude futures — and products based on possible supply problems.

The Energy Information Administration said last Wednesday that U.S. crude oil stocks are at 263.7 million barrels. That’s the lowest level seen since 1975 and below the 270 million barrel level identified by the National Petroleum Council as an indication of strained U.S. supplies.

The EIA and the American Petroleum Institute, an industry group, are set to release their latest weekly U.S. petroleum inventory data Wednesday.

BP’s 410,000 barrels a day refinery in Whiting, Indiana, had a crude unit shut by a brief fire early Sunday and a fire Sunday caused a 20,000 barrels a day hydrotreating unit at ConocoPhillips’ 300,000 barrels a day Wood River refinery in Roxana, Illinois, to be shut.

James Steel, director of New York research for Refco, said even a rumor of delivery problems with crude stocks as tight as they are now can have a big impact.

He added that funds appeared to all get signals “to jump back in again.” Steel said he suspects the funds will take profits soon on such a gain.

March gasoline and heating oil futures, which began trading as the front month Monday, gained as well, with gasoline futures being the first place funds reportedly reappeared as buyers.

Gasoline futures settled up 5.04 cents, or 5.2 percent, at $1.0173 a gallon after touching a high of $1.0200.

Heating oil futures settled up 2.92 cents, or 3 percent, at 94.48 cents a gallon after touching a high of 94.70 cents.

Natural gas for March delivery settled up 17.7 cents at $5.574 per 1,000 cubic feet.