1st LD Writethru: Oil prices edge up after selloff
Xinhua, April 10, 2015 Adjust font size:
Crude prices rebounded Thursday from Wednesday's sharp decline as traders bought the dip.
Crude prices plunged Wednesday as a government report showed that U.S. crude output added last week.
Last week, U.S. crude production increased 18,000 barrels to 9. 404 million barrels a day, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA).
U.S. crude supplies of the week ending April 3 increased 10.9 million barrels to 482.4 million, 98.3 million barrels more than a year earlier.
Meanwhile, inventories at Cushing, Oklahoma, the delivery point for the contract, gained 1.2 million barrels to 60.2 million barrels.
Saudi Arabia pumped around 10.3 million barrels per day in March, marking an increase from previous months, said the country' s Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi Tuesday.
Crude prices were also boosted by upbeat U.S. job data. In the week ending April 4, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial jobless claims was 281,000, an increase of 14,000 from the previous week's revised level, but below market consensus of 285, 000, according to U.S. Labor Department Thursday.
Light, sweet crude for May delivery gained 37 cents to settle at 50.79 dollars a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, while Brent crude for May delivery moved up 1.02 dollars to close at 56.57 dollars a barrel. Endite