Oil higher in Asian trade

SINGAPORE: Oil was higher in Asian trade on Thursday, bouncing back from overnight falls as investors digested key US inventory data, analysts said.

New York's main contract, light sweet crude for January delivery rose 20 cents to $76.80 a barrel.

Brent North Sea crude for January delivery added 42 cents to $78.30.

Oil prices fell sharply in US trade yesterday after news of a larger-than-expected rise in gasoline or petrol supplies in the United States, the world's biggest energy consuming nation.

The US government's Department of Energy (DoE) yesterday announced that gasoline reserves jumped by four million barrels. That was far more than the 700,000-barrel increase forecast by analysts.

The DoE added that American crude oil stockpiles leapt by 2.1 million barrels, which was more than twice market expectations.

However, investors in Asia focused today on a bigger-than-expected 1.2-million-barrel drawdown in US distillate stocks, including diesel and heating oil, indicating steady demand ahead of the winter, an analyst said.

The market was expecting a 300,000-barrel decline. "One optimistic thing was the distillate stocks which were down," said Benjamin Westmore, a Melbourne-based minerals and energy economist with the National Australia Bank.