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Brent crude futures were up 68 cents at $81.23 a barrel by 1140
GMT. U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude futures gained 65 cents
to $76.50.
OPEC+ will soon have to decide whether to extend beyond March
the 2.2 million barrels per day (bpd) of voluntary oil
production cuts announced last November.
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell on Wednesday said that
interest rates had peaked and would move lower in coming months,
with inflation continuing to fall and an expectation of
sustained economic growth.
Lower interest rates and economic growth help oil demand.
But Powell declined to promise that rate cuts would come as
early as the Fed's March 19-20 meeting, as investors had hoped.
China, the world's second-biggest economy, revealed new support
measures to help to reduce fallout from the liquidation of
property developer Evergrande.
Analysts at JPMorgan said they expected China to remain the
single largest contributor to global oil demand growth in 2024,
forecasting that Chinese demand would grow by 530,000 barrels
per day (bpd), having jumped by 1.2 million bpd last year.
"Geopolitics aside, our view remains that 2024 will be
fundamentally a healthy year for the oil market and we
recommended using December's sell-off as a buying opportunity,"
JPMorgan said in a client note.
In another glimmer of better economic news, the downturn in
Germany's manufacturing sector eased in January, a survey showed
on Thursday.
In the Middle East, worries over attacks by Yemen-based Houthi
forces on shipping in the Red Sea are driving up costs and
disrupting global oil trading. The Houthi group also said it
would keep up attacks on U.S. and British warships in what it
called acts of self defence.
"The energy market remains on edge as it waits for a U.S.
response to the drone attack on American troops in Jordan," ANZ
Research said in a note.
(Reporting by Paul Carsten in London, Katya Golubkova in Tokyo
and Florence Tan in SingaporeEditing by David Goodman)
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