Crude-Oil Futures Slightly Higher Ahead of US Jobs Data

November Brent crude on London’s ICE Futures exchange rose $0.44 to $48.13 a barrel.

The USA government said this week Russian Federation was reacting from a position of weakness because of the duel economic pressures from low crude oil prices and sanctions.

That saw oil prices increasing earlier today.

“Looking ahead, we expect sentiment to begin to improve gradually over the coming months as the stock market stabilizes and recent policy support measures continue to feed through into stronger economic activity”, Capital Economics said in a note.

But macroeconomic indicators could still have an outsized impact on oil prices and Friday’s U.S.jobs report will be closely watched for cues. The currency fell on concerns that the US economy may still be too weak to allow the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates this year.

“I think that might be fairly supportive”, said Gene McGillian, an analyst at Tradition Energy. The intervention added to geopolitical uncertainty in the oil-rich Middle East.

Several market participants are increasingly factoring in rangebound oil price movement for the rest of this year.

On Friday, oil services firm Baker Hughes Inc. will publish the latest US oil drilling rig count, which many see as a proxy for activity in the industry.

Brent and WTI crude prices are expected to strengthen marginally in the fourth quarter as oil production in the US weakens, but the longer term outlook for oil prices remains dismal, particularly for 2016 and 2017, analysts at BMI Research, a unit of Fitch Group, said.

While USA output has started to fall, other major producers have kept pumping crude at a high pace.

096 million barrels per day (bpd), which is positive news for the oversupplied global market. Oil production increased by 0.4% from August and analysts predict it will grow for the year as a whole.

Gasoline futures fell 3.2% to $1.3235 a gallon.

Eric Yep in Singapore contributed to this article.