Oil Futures Consolidate After Overnight Rises

Oil futures are largely unchanged in Asian trading on Thursday as prices consolidate after rising in overnight trading.

--November Nymex light, sweet crude oil on the New York Mercantile exchange was recently flat at $52.04 a barrel in the Globex trading session. December Brent was also unchanged at $58.14.

--The market remains focused on events in Iraq as reports suggest that production disruptions are building and inventories at the Ceyhan port are being drawn down quickly.

--The focus on geopolitical tensions is taking away from the inventory report from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, which showed an unexpected draw from U.S. crude stockpiles. The EIA reported Wednesday that crude inventories fell by 5.7 million barrels last week, more than the 3.2 million barrels that analysts were expecting, according to a survey by The Wall Street Journal.

Write to Lucy Craymer at lucy.craymer@wsj.com, @lucy_craymer

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

October 18, 2017 23:13 ET (03:13 GMT)