Oil steady as trade optimism rises

LONDON — Oil steadied on Thursday amid optimism that the United States and China could resolve their trade dispute, though prices came under pressure from Saudi Arabia’s moves to restore output quickly after attacks on its oil installations.

Brent crude futures were down 12 cents, or 0.2%, at $62.27 a barrel by 1057 GMT.

U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures were little changed, losing 3 cents to $56.46 a barrel.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday signaled that a resolution to the dispute with China might be near, which could eventually boost fuel demand.

A day after delivering a stinging rebuke to China over its trade policies, Trump said Beijing wants to make a deal and it “could happen sooner than you think”.

Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe also signed a limited trade deal that would open Japanese markets to $7 billion of U.S. products annually.

“With the swift resolution of production outages and resilience of Saudi’s oil sector, barring a repeat of drone attacks, the oil market’s focus will, in our opinion, return to the economy and trade wars,” global oil strategist Harry Tchilinguirian told the Reuters Global Oil Forum.

“News on the U.S.-China front was positive yesterday, albeit without materially affecting oil prices.”

Brent and WTI fell on Wednesday to their lowest since the Sept. 14 attacks on Saudi Arabia.

Prices were weighed down by a surprise 2.4 million barrel build in U.S. crude inventories last week and a faster than expected recovery of Saudi output after the drone and missile strikes on two of its oil-processing plants.

The world’s top oil exporter has restored its production capacity to 11.3 million barrels per day, sources briefed on Saudi Aramco’s operations told Reuters.

LEONHARD FOEGER/REUTERS A drilling rig of Austria’s oil and gas group OMV is seen at their exploratory drilling site near Maustrenk, Austria, last year.