Oil holds gains with focus on US stockpiles, supply uncertainty

Oil steadied after gains as an industry report flagged another build in US crude stockpiles, and uncertainty over global supplies lingered.Brent crude traded near $76 a barrel after a three-day streak of advances, while West Texas Intermediate was around $72. The industry-funded American Petroleum Institute reported a 3.3 million-barrel increase in US commercial inventories last week, which would be the fourth week of builds if confirmed by official data later on Thursday.

Crude has risen this week on concerns about tighter supply, as OPEC+ looks set to push back a production increase, exports from Kazakhstan were cut by a Ukrainian drone strike, and the Group of Seven nations mulled a tighter price cap on Russian oil. However, trading has calmed after a tumultuous start to the year, with a gauge of implied volatility declining as the market becomes increasingly numb to the array of changes that US President Donald Trump is seeking to implement.

Elsewhere, exports from Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan could resume this week, although Turkey said it has yet to receive notification of a resumption in flows to the Ceyhan energy hub. Pipelines from Iraq’s Kurdistan region run through Turkey for the oil to be shipped.Meanwhile, Trump called his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskiy a dictator, compounding fears that a deal to end the three-year-old war with Russia will be reached without Kyiv’s involvement. Any peace agreement could impact the status of currently-sanctioned barrels from Russia.

“There’s still a lot of uncertainty in the oil market, with no prominent direction for now” given all the unknowns surrounding supply and Trump’s policy stances, said Sean Lim, an analyst for RHB Investment Bank Bhd in Kuala Lumpur. The bank forecasts Brent to average $75 a barrel this year.

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