(RTTNews) - The price of crude oil was little changed Thursday morning amid a marginal weakness in the U.S. dollar ahead of the Labor Department's report on weekly jobless claims.
Light Sweet Crude Oil (WTI) futures for December delivery, edged down $0.01 to $81.93 a barrel. Yesterday, oil ended lower amid recovering U.S. dollar and worries over surging inventories after the EIA reported larger-than-expected pile up in crude oil inventories.
Wednesday during trading hours, the EIA revealed U.S. crude oil inventories moved up by 5.0 million barrels, while gasoline inventories were down by 4.40 million barrels in the week ended October 22. Analysts were expecting crude oil inventories pile up by 700,000 barrels, while gasoline stocks are seen dropping 200,000 barrels last week.
Meanwhile, the U.S. dollar was moving lower versus the euro and lingering near its one-week low against sterling. The buck was edging down against the yen and the Swiss Franc.
Today's focus will be on weekly jobless claims data to gauge the labor market in the world's biggest economy. Economists expect initial jobless claims to edge up to 455,000 from the earlier week's 452,000.
