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Brent crude futures were up 84 cents, or 1.15%, to $74.04 a
barrel at 0959 GMT. U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude
rose 77 cents, or 1.13%, to $69.04 a barrel.
Both benchmarks fell 1.5% on Wednesday.
The market saw support after data on Thursday showed China's oil
refinery throughput in May rising 15.4% from a year earlier,
hitting its second highest total on record.
Chinese demand for oil is seen continuing to rise at an assured
rate during the second half of the year, Kuwait Petroleum
Corporation's (KPC) chief executive said on Thursday.
But a weak economic outlook weighed, as China's industrial
output and retail sales growth in May missed forecasts.
Also capping price gains were fears that higher interest rates
would slow economies in the United States and Europe, and lower
oil demand.
The U.S. Federal Reserve left interest rates unchanged on
Wednesday but signalled at least half of a percentage point
increase to borrowing costs by the end of this year.
The European Central Bank is expected to increase the deposit
rate by 25 basis points to 3.5% later in the day, the highest
level in 22 years, and leave the door open to further hikes.
Meanwhile, the Bank of England is set to make its monetary
policy decision on June 22, with UK interest rates expected to
rise above those in the United States this year.
Analysts, however, expect oil prices to see support later in the
year as voluntary cuts by OPEC+ countries implemented in May,
and from Saudi Arabia in July, coincide with robust demand.
UBS expects a supply deficit of around 1.5 million barrels per
day (bpd) in June and more than 2 million bpd in July.
"Once these deficits become visible in on-land oil inventories,
we expect oil prices to trend higher," the bank said in a note
on Thursday.
(Reporting by Rowena Edwards in LondonAdditional reporting by
Jeslyn Lerh in Singapore and Arathy Somasekhar in HoustonEditing
by Mark Potter and Emelia Sithole-Matarise)
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