Reuters

BlueGold Capital, a hedge fund managing $1.5 billion (957 million pounds), said it was not responsible for recent crude price falls after market talk it had sold long positions helped send oil down 5 percent on Thursday.

'We utterly and completely deny it,' Dennis Crema, chief executive officer of the oil focussed fund, told Reuters by telephone. 'Activity was no different from activity in the last 6-7 months.'

Crude oil futures fell on Thursday in heavy volume. Several traders and brokers at different firms said they thought the sell-off in crude was linked to a hedge fund quickly unloading a big oil position.

There was widespread talk among traders in New York and London that BlueGold was a large seller of long crude positions.

Crema said BlueGold was continuing business as usual. 'We...deny any false rumours surrounding BlueGold's continuing operations,' he added.

Even if there was liquidation of some length by BlueGold, it was not clear what impact this might have had, as the market was under pressured by several bearish developments.

Other factors cited for the falls in crude were the stronger dollar, worries about the health of the euro zone together with weaker stock markets -- a powerful negative combination for oil which one analyst described on Friday as a 'toxic mix.'

More than 496 million barrels worth of front-month NYMEX crude futures changed hands -- enough oil to meet global demand for six days -- as volumes spiked in late trade on Thursday, according to Reuters data.

Currently, U.S. crude costs around $73 a barrel. BlueGold's $1.5 billion would be enough to buy about 20.5 million barrels.

ICE Brent crude futures also saw very high volumes of trade with a total of 567,000 lots changing hands -- not far below the all-time record of 581,000 lots seen on December 9 of last year. A busy day often sees volumes of around 300,000 lots.

Crema told Reuters BlueGold had a bullish view on oil prices this year, albeit in challenging conditions.

'At the current time we maintain our bullish outlook for the price of oil in 2010,' Crema said. 'It's a difficult trading environment.'

BlueGold was co-founded in February 2008 by Pierre Andurand and Dennis Crema, both former oil traders at Vitol.