Oil futures consolidate gains in Asia, near one-month highs

London (Quantum Commodity Intelligence) – Crude oil futures consolidated the previous day's steep gains during Asian trading Thursday, following a run of positive indicators this week.

This includes Chinese crude import data, the IEA forecasting a more positive outlook for 2020 and data from the U.S. EIA showing a sharp drawdown in crude oil inventories last week.

Brent futures for June crude were trading at $66.48/b at 1545 in Singapore (0745 GMT), down $0.10/b from Wednesday's settle of $66.58/b, while May WTI was trading $0.06/b lower at $63.09/b. Crude prices rallied nearly 5% on Wednesday.

Oil futures were last at this level on March 18, but had been trending lower the last three weeks on a combination of European lockdowns, the pace of vaccine rollouts and the decision from OPEC+ to gradually increase oil production from May.  

Market focus now switches to the next round of talks in Vienna to strike a deal on Iran's nuclear ambitions, while China's GPD data scheduled for Friday will be keenly anticipated with a double-digit year-on-year growth rate expected.

On Wednesday the US Energy Information Administration reported a draw of 5.9 million barrels of crude in the week ending April 9, exceeding analyst forecasts of around 3 million barrels.