Oil Prices Higher Supported by U.S. Oil Inventory Data

Oil prices are higher in Asian trading Wednesday are paring overnight losses as a fall in U.S. oil inventories provides some support. The market is expected to remain volatile as concerns remain around when a major pipeline in Europe will come back online.

--January light, sweet crude on the New York Mercantile Exchange was recently up 0.7% at $57.53 a barrel in the Globex trading session. February Brent rose 0.9% to $63.93.

--The American Petroleum Institute, an industry group, said late Tuesday that its own data for the week showed a 7.4-million-barrel decrease in crude supplies, a 2.3-million-barrel rise in gasoline stocks and a 1.5-million-barrel rise in distillate inventories, according to a market participant.

--Focus remains on the U.S. and the release of the weekly EIA report. Estimates from 11 analysts and traders surveyed showed U.S. oil inventories are projected to have decreased by 2.9 million barrels, on average, in the week ended Dec. 8.

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

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

December 12, 2017 22:23 ET (03:23 GMT)