Oil jumps $2 on better-than-expected GDP data… OPEC says “willing to go further” to balance market… Labour action in U.K., U.S. supports crude prices…

Oil futures rose $2 on Friday after data showed the U.S. economy shrank less than expected in the fourth quarter and after OPEC signalled it may again cut production.

By 1420 GMT, U.S. crude was up $1.34 a barrel at $42.78, after earlier touching $43.44, while London Brent crude had gained $1.70 to $47.10.

“The rally got started on WTI (West Texas Intermediate) when the GDP numbers were released,” Olivier Jakob of consultants Petromatrix said.

Data on Friday showed gross domestic product, which measures total U.S goods and services output, fell 3.8 percent in the fourth quarter, the steepest decline in nearly 27 years. But this was better than the market’s forecast for a 5.4 percent contraction.

Crude was also supported by strong RBOB gasoline and heating oil futures as February refined products contracts approached expiry, a possible workers strike at some U.S. refineries at the weekend, and word that OPEC may act again to cut production.

The producer cartel’s secretary general told Reuters it was willing to cut output further at its meetings in March.

“If the market is unbalanced, yes we will take measures to balance the market,” the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries’ Abdullah al-Badri said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Friday.

The comments are a strong indication the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, source of a third of the world’s oil, is willing to go further to stem oil’s $100-a-barrel collapse since June last year.

SHRINKING DEMAND

Oil has fallen nearly 11 percent over the past week but is only down 6.8 percent from December, its smallest monthly percentage fall since June 2008.

On Thursday oil fell 1.7 percent on data showing the U.S. jobless rate rose to a record peak in January, single-family home sales fell in December to their lowest ever and new orders for durable goods tumbled for a fifth straight month.

Shrinking demand for fuel has also contributed to the biggest four-month build-up in U.S. crude stockpiles since 1990.

Asia’s outlook was equally bleak. Data showed Japan’s unemployment at a near three-year high and industrial output in the world’s third-biggest oil consumer plunging a record 10 percent last month.

But traders said a possible strike by 30,000 U.S. refinery workers who threatened on Thursday to shutter more than half of the nation’s oil refining capacity could support crude.

In Britain, energy workers staged unofficial walkouts on Friday when anger over the use of foreign workers at an oil refinery spread to other sites across the country.

Contractors at Total’s Lindsey refinery in eastern England began a protest on Wednesday. The dispute spread on Friday, and hundreds walked out at the Grangemouth oil refinery in Scotland run by Ineos Group.

Total and Ineos have both said production has not been affected.

LONDON, Jan 30 (Reuters)