Oil prices rose above 53 dollars in Asian trade Monday on hopes a global effort to lift the world economy out of recession would yield results.

New York's main futures contract, light sweet crude for delivery in May, gained 90 cents to 53.41 dollars a barrel in afternoon trade.

Brent North Sea crude for May delivery advanced 68 cents to 54.15 dollars.

"Investors believe that there will be cooperation to lift the world economy out of the recession (after the G20 summit)," said Tony Nunan, a risk management executive at Mitsubishi Corp in Tokyo.

"They are coming back into the market based on the belief that the economy is not as bad as it could have been."

US President Barack Obama and other leaders of the G20 rich and emerging economies agreed at a London summit last week on a raft of measures to pull the global economy out of its current crisis, including a huge funding programme.

However, other analysts cautioned that oil prices were unlikely to be supported at current levels as the global economies are still on a downturn and energy demand remains weak.

"We continue to believe that weak economic growth and slumping oil demand over the next few months will mean any rallies in the crude oil price will be unsustainable," said Deutsche Bank analyst Michael Lewis.

Last Friday, the US Labor Department reported that unemployment rate in the world's biggest energy consumer jumped to a 25-year high of 8.5 percent in March as recession-hit employers shed another 663,000 jobs.

The monthly snapshot, seen as one of the best indicators of economic momentum in the United States, showed widespread job losses across most sectors of the economy as the jobless rate rose from 8.1 percent in February.