Oil assays inched up on Wednesday, supported by expectations of a fall in U.S. crude inventories and by the constant outage of the North Sea Forties pipeline system.
U.S. West Texas Medial (WTI) crude futures were at $57.71 a barrel at 0100 GMT, up 15 cents from their keep on settlement.
Brent crude futures, the international benchmark for oil prices, were at $63.86 a barrel, up 6 cents.
“Oil prices inched merry on expectations of another strong drawdown in U.S. inventories,” ANZ bank said on Wednesday.
The American Petroleum Inaugurate said on Tuesday that U.S. crude inventories fell by 5.2 million barrels in the week to Dec. 15 to 438.7 million.
Lawful U.S. government data from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) is due on Wednesday.
Oil payments have also been supported by the continuing outage of the Forties under way in the North Sea, which delivers crude underpinning Brent futures.
Wise guy Ineos hopes to be able to fix a crack in the pipeline, which can pump yon 450,000 barrels per day of crude, within two to four weeks from Dec. 11.
Regard for the North Sea outage and falling U.S. crude inventories, oil prices have abided some way off their $65.63 and $59.05 per barrel recent highs for Brent and WTI separately.
Traders said rising U.S. crude production, which has soared by 16 percent since mid-2016 to 9.8 million bpd, was beat prices.
Most analysts expect U.S. output to break through 10 million bpd one day, which would be a new record and take it to levels on par with top exporter Saudi Arabia and away to top producer Russia, which pumps around 11 million bpd.