Oil prices took their largest single-day leap ever Friday, and energy ministers from the world's top industrialized nations pledged Sunday to work to fight soaring energy costs.


Crude oil futures soared 8 percent Friday to $138.54 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The rise of nearly $11 for the day, a record, was on top of an increase of nearly $5.50 the day before. Friday's surge happened after a Morgan Stanley analyst predicted we could see oil prices of $150 a barrel by Independence Day,

Energy ministers from the Group of Eight countries, joined by China, India and South Korea, have been meeting In Japan, and talked about ways to diversify their energy sources, increase energy efficiency, and urge producers to expand production. The 11 nations account for 65 percent of the world's energy consumption.

The G-8 countries - the United States, Russia, Japan, Germany, France, Italy, Canada and Britain - pledged to launch 20 demonstration projects by 2010 on so-called "carbon capture and storage," which would allow power plants to catch emissions and inject them into underground storage spaces. There was less agreement on how much to expand nuclear power.