LONDON—Oil futures edged higher as they held to a narrow range.
The front-month August Brent contract on London's ICE futures exchange recently was 43 cents higher at $75.14 a barrel. The front-month August contract on the New York Mercantile Exchange was trading 29 cents up at $75.73 a barrel.
Prices rallied Thursday on a combination of Wall Street gains and a weekly report from the U.S. Department of Energy that showed a drop in crude stocks of about 5 million barrels and a rise in product demand. But there are nagging concerns about stockpiles of both groups.
"The strongest part of the data was the weekly demand readings," said Ed Meir, analyst at MF Global. "Here, total product demand was up 5.8% from a year ago, while gasoline was up by 2.4%, but distillates were up an astounding 30% from last year."
U.S. gasoline and distillate stocks both rose for the week ending July 2 amid a rise in refinery utilization rates, which dampened Thursday's bullish enthusiasm.
Peter Buetel, an analyst at Cameron Hanover, noted that crude oil stockpiles are 3.14% higher than same month in 2009, distillate stocks are 0.63% higher and gasoline inventories are 2.95% higher.
Compared to two years ago, crude oil stocks are now 21.88% higher, distillate stocks are 30.36% higher and gasoline stocks are 3.59% higher.
Details of the North Sea crude loading programs in August began to emerge Friday. Brent crude, which is one of the four grades that make up the physical benchmark Dated Brent BFOE, is scheduled to load 157,968 barrels a day next month, compared with 116,129 barrels a day in July.
