The informal talks next week in Algeria to cap output by the world’s biggest oil producers may turn into a formal meeting, according to the host.
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CMC Markets Singapore analyst Margaret Yang said traders are also “waiting for this week’s (US) crude inventory data to find clues of any changes of the supply-demand relationship”.
While WTI rose, USA gasoline futures RBc1 fell 4 percent to $1.3646 a gallon on worries that a gasoline glut would return with the full restart of the Colonial line.
The American Petroleum Institute, a trade group, reported a 7.5 million barrel drop in USA crude inventories for the week ended September 16, versus a 3.4 million-barrel drop forecast by oil market analysts polled by Reuters.
Venezuela’s Oil Minister Eulogio Del Pino said on Monday that global oil supply needs to decrease by a tenth to match consumption.
Japan’s customs-cleared crude oil imports rose 0.5 percent in August from the same month a year earlier, the Ministry of Finance said on Wednesday.
“The price surge was sparked by news from Libya”, analysts at Commerzbank AG led by Eugen Weinberg in Frankfurt said in a report.
U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil futures CLc1 were trading at $45.59 per barrel at 0045 GMT, up 25 cents from their previous close.
Market analysts’ expected a crude-stock increase of 3.35 million barrels, while the American Petroleum Institute late Tuesday reported a supply draw of a whopping 7.5 million barrels.
He said the shipment was meant to have gone out last week but was delayed because of fighting at the port.
Oil producers from the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and Russian Federation plan to meet in Algeria next week to discuss measures to rein in the oversupply, including an oil production freeze at current output levels, but analysts said they did not expect significant results.
Crude prices have recently rallied but remain far below their peaks above $100 per barrel reached before the commodities rout that began in July 2014.
OPEC probably won’t clinch a deal to limit production in Algiers as members stay focused on either boosting output or defending their respective slices of the market, according to a Bloomberg survey.
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OPEC is close to reaching an agreement with producers outside the group on how to stabilize the market, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said Sunday after talks with his counterparts from fellow OPEC members Iran and Ecuador.
