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Brent crude futures for January were up 84 cents, or 1.1%, at
$80.85 a barrel at 1109 GMT, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate
(WTI) crude futures for December were at $76.52, up 78 cents, or
1%.
Both contracts are set to fall about 5% on the week.
"Concerns about demand have replaced the fear of production
outages related to the Middle East conflict," Commerzbank said.
Weak Chinese economic data this week increased worries of
faltering demand. Additionally, refiners in China, the largest
buyer of crude oil from the world's largest exporter Saudi
Arabia, asked for less supply from Saudi Arabia for December.
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and allies
led by Russia, or OPEC+ as the group is known, meet on Nov. 26
to set production policy, and focus will be on whether Saudi
Arabia extends a 1 million barrel-per-day voluntary cut set to
expire at the end of this year.
"We believe the chances that Saudi Arabia will extend its
unilateral ... cut well into 1Q24 is certainly increasing given
renewed market concerns about Chinese demand and the broader
macro outlook," RBC Capital Markets analyst Helima Croft said.
Analysts at Citi said in a note on Thursday it expected the
downward pressure to ease and prices to recover after falling to
their lowest since July earlier this week.
"We expect prices to consolidate, and we maintain our near-term
price forecasts with support expected to come from refinery
maintenance easing and a shift in the risk-reward for investors
following the recent sell-off," Citi said.
(Additional reporting by Sudarshan Varadhan in SingaporeEditing
by Nick Macfie)
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