Oil traded near $60 a barrel, a six- month high in New York, as rebounding equity markets stoked speculation that an economic recovery will reduce the glut of fuel supplies. Crude futures advanced after European stock markets erased losses and the U.S. dollar weakened, boosting the appeal of commodities to investors. Europe’s Dow Jones Stoxx 600 Index advanced as much as 0.9 percent in London. Oil’s gain overrode analyst forecasts that stockpiles are still rising. “Improving sentiment is driving equities higher and the U.S. dollar lower, which are both quite positive for oil prices,” said Eugen Weinberg, senior analyst at Commerzbank AG in Frankfurt. “People are counting on economic recovery soon.” Crude oil for June delivery rose as much as $1.42, or 2.4 percent, to $59.92 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, the highest since Nov. 11, 2008. It traded at $59.88 as of 1:20 p.m. in London, up 34 percent this year. Yesterday, oil dropped as much as 3.2 percent before settling at $58.50, down 0.2 percent. “Equities are still holding firm and the weakness in the U.S. dollar is supporting the oil market,” said Andrey Kryuchenkov, an analyst at VTB Capital in London. The market is waiting for tomorrow’s Energy Department report on U.S. stockpiles, he said. U.S. crude stockpiles remain at the highest since 1990 and probably gained 1 million barrels last week, according to the median of 12 responses in a Bloomberg News survey. They climbed to 375.3 million barrels in the week ended May 1, the highest since September 1990, according to the Energy Department data. Storing Less The incentive to store crude may weaken as fuel demand increases and supplies from outside the U.S. diminish, said Olivier Jakob, managing director of Petromatrix GmbH, a consultant based in Zug, Switzerland. “Seasonally we are moving towards the months where gasoline demand will be the main driver in the Atlantic Basin, where supply from the North Sea will be reduced for maintenance, and where West Texas Intermediate crude will start to price some hurricane risk,” he wrote in a report today. The dollar dropped to $1.3689 against the euro from $1.3582 yesterday. A weaker dollar encourages investors to buy commodities such as oil as a hedge against inflation. Brent crude oil for June settlement rose as much as 2.4 percent to $58.87 a barrel on London’s ICE Futures Europe exchange after falling as low as $56.87. The contract traded at $58.84 at 1:20 p.m. local time. China, the world’s second-largest energy user, increased its crude-oil imports in April by 14 percent from a year earlier after the government announced plans to boost fuel supplies. Crude-oil imports reached 16.17 million metric tons last month, or 3.9 million barrels a day, according to a statement on the Chinese customs department’s Web site today.

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