The price of crude oil was trading firm Thursday morning amid hopes for a deal that would temporarily raise the debt ceiling.
In its monthly Oil Market Report released Thursday, the OPEC nudged up its 2014 global oil demand forecast by 1.0 mbd to reach 90.8 mbd and said non-OECD countries are projected to lead oil demand growth with 1.2 mbd, while OECD consumption is seen continuing to decline but at a lower rate of 0.2 mbd. However, for the year 2013 global oil demand forecast is estimated to average 89.7 mbd, unchanged from its last month's report.
Light Sweet Crude Oil (WTI) futures for November delivery, added $0.46 to $102.07 a barrel.
Wednesday during trading hours, the EIA said that US crude oil inventories jumped 6.80 million barrels and gasoline stocks edged up by 0.10 million barrels in the weekended October 04. Analysts expected US crude oil inventories to add a meager 1.4 million barrels last week.
This morning the U.S. dollar continued to level-off from around its nine-month low versus the euro, the Swiss franc and sterling, while recovering form near a 2-month low against the yen.
In economic news. the Bank of England retained its record-low interest rate and the size of quantitative easing at GBP 375 billion on Thursday. The nine-member Monetary Policy Committee headed by Mark Carney decided to keep the key interest rate unchanged at a historic low 0.50 percent.
Traders will look to the weekly jobless claims data from the U.S. Labor Department, due out at 8.30 a.m ET. Economists expect claims to have risen to 310,00 from 308,000 in the previous week.
Separately, the Labor Department is scheduled to release its report on export and import prices for September. Economists expect export prices to have edged down by 0.1 percent compared to the previous month, while import prices may have edged up 0.2 percent.
