Oil prices held steady Friday in Asia after rising to a trading record above $124 a barrel as bullish momentum and renewed weakening of the U.S. dollar against foreign currencies kept the commodity on its upward trend.

Light, sweet crude for June delivery rose 69 cents to $124.38 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange by midday in Singapore. The contract rose 16 cents Thursday to settle at a record $123.69. It then pushed to a trading record of $124.61 a barrel in the after-hours electronic trading.

Analysts said volume was quite low in the electronic session, making it easy for bulls to keep pushing oil higher. Analysts also struggled to explain the continued rise of oil futures after a larger-than-expected build in crude oil stocks reported Wednesday in the U.S.

“There is no fundamental news out to cause this market to move like this,” said Linda Rafield, senior oil analyst at Platts, the energy research arm of McGraw-Hill Cos.

“This appears to me to be computer-generated buying,” Rafield said. Some investors use software that buys automatically when prices rise to certain levels; Thursday’s record settlement may have triggered a flurry of electronic buy orders.

Goldman Sachs analysts recently predicted prices will rise as high as $150 to $200 a barrel within two years, and that forecast has driven much of oil’s gains in recent days.

Analysts at Goldman and firms such as Barclays Capital believe tight global supplies and growing demand from fast-growing economies in countries such as China and India are driving oil higher.

Other analysts say there is still bias against the U.S. dollar, which has again started to weaken versus such currencies as the euro and yen. In Tokyo’s currency market, the dollar was at 103.50 yen in Asia, down from levels near 105 earlier in the week, and the euro was near $1.54 after dipping below $1.53 Thursday.

Investors view commodities such as oil as a hedge against inflation, and some analysts think the dollar’s protracted decline is the main reason behind oil prices doubling from a year ago. Also, a weaker dollar makes oil cheaper to investors overseas.

Prices may also be getting a boost from comments Thursday by the OPEC secretary general.

Abdalla Salem El-Badri on Thursday reiterated his position that oil supplies are adequate, and that there is no need for the cartel to boost production. He said several Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries oil projects are coming on line, but he noted that several member countries are having a hard time finding buyers for their additional supplies.

In other Nymex trading, June gasoline futures rose 0.29 cent to $3.1407 a gallon, while heating oil futures rose 0.72 cent to $3.517 a gallon. Natural gas futures rose 0.7 cent to $11.27 per 1,000 cubic feet.

In London, June Brent crude futures rose 77 cents to $123.61 a barrel on the ICE Futures exchange in London.