Oil rose 2 percent on Thursday, heading for its largest weekly gain in a month, after a surprisingly large drop in U.S. crude inventories emboldened investors ahead of next week’s meeting between OPEC members and Russia to discuss supply.
A fall in the dollar against a basket of currencies .DXY to a two-week low further underpinned the market.
Brent crude futures LCOc1 rose 95 cents to $47.78 a barrel by 1345 GMT, up 4.3 percent so far this week and set for the largest one-week rise since mid-August. U.S. oil futures CLc1 rose $1.09 to $46.43 a barrel.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration on Wednesday reported a 6.2-million-barrel drop in crude oil inventories last week, the second-biggest fall in a year. [EIA/S]
The drawdown, along with a more benign outlook for U.S. monetary policy, overshadowed news that Russian oil output hit a new record above 11 million barrels per day this week and that Libya had exported its first oil cargo since at least 2014 from the port of Ras Lanuf.
