Oil prices ticked higher on Friday after a week of volatile trading, shedding early gains on profit-taking ahead of the New Year holiday as global crude benchmarks hovered near their lowest levels in more than a year.
Brent crude oil futures were up 8 cents at $52.24 a barrel by 12:07 p.m. ET, having earlier risen more than 3 percent. It had dropped 4.2 percent on Thursday.
U.S. light crude rose 64 cents, or 1.4 percent, to $45.25, after rising 3.6 percent in early trade.
Futures were little changed after the U.S. Energy Information Administration said the nation’s stockpiles of crude oil were “virtually unchanged” from the previous week. Crude inventories were down by 46,000 barrels in the week to Dec. 21, compared with analysts’ expectations for a decrease of 2.9 million barrels.
Gasoline stocks rose by 3 million barrels, compared with analysts’ expectations in a Reuters poll for a gain of 28,000 barrels. Distillate stockpiles, which include diesel and heating oil, rose by 2,000 barrels, versus expectations for a 529,000-barrel drop, the EIA data showed.
Oil prices fell to their lowest in almost 18 months this week and are down more than 20 percent for the year, depressed by rising U.S. supply and concern over global economic growth. Both benchmarks are set for their third straight week of losses.
Traders appeared to be squaring their books ahead of expected light volumes on Monday and a market closure on Tuesday for the New Year’s Day holiday.
“Looks like some people in the U.S. and UK got a nice opportunity to bail out of longs,” Sukrit Vijayakar, principal and trader at Trifecta Consultants in Mumbai, told Reuters Global Oil Forum.
Stock markets in Europe and Asia rose on Friday after Wall Street ended a volatile session with big gains, but fears of further price swings and worries about U.S. politics kept investors cautious.
“For the time being, the stock market and the oil market will echo each other,” said Ahn Yea-Ha, commodity analyst at Kiwoom Securities. “Global economic slowdown worries have been weighing on stock market movements, and oil prices are not free from those concerns.”
Stephen Innes, head of trading for Asia-Pacific at futures brokerage Oanda in Singapore, said crude prices had been pressured by slowing economic growth “coupled with the expectation of strong U.S. production in the new year”.
The United States has emerged as the world’s biggest crude producer this year, pumping 11.6 million barrels per day (bpd), more than both Saudi Arabia and Russia.
Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak said on Thursday that Russia would cut its crude output by between 3 million and 5 million tonnes in the first half of 2019 as part of a deal between producers.
Earlier this month, OPEC and its allies including Russia, agreed to cut output by 1.2 million bpd, or more than 1 percent of global consumption, starting in January.
Markets will be closed on Tuesday for the New Year’s Holiday and trading is expected to be light on Monday.
“Things will only start to get slowly back to normal at the end of next week,” said Olivier Jakob of Swiss energy consultancy Petromatrix. “Until then we continue to view the crude oil futures as very difficult to trade and too dependent on the variations of the equity markets.”
