Investing.com - Crude rose furtehr in Asia on Friday despite a disappointing Caixin manufacturing survey with the latest U.S. rig count data from Baker Hughes ahead.
On the New York Mercantile Exchange, WTI crude for August delivery rose 0.46% to $48.55 a barrel. On the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), Brent rose 0.56% to $49.99 a barrel.
Manufacfturing gauges in China released on Friday painted a mixed picture with an unexpected drop in the Caixin survey and an expected result from the China Federation of Logistics and Purchasing (CFLP) and National Bureau of Statistics.
Overnight, crude futures retreated from two-week highs on Wednesday, amid heavy profit taking, but still ended the second quarter with one of its strongest three-month rallies in seven years, amid a host of global supply disruptions in recent weeks.
For the quarter, both the U.S. and international benchmarks surged approximately 25%, as a series of production slowdowns throughout the world helped provide significant upside pressure for crude futures. While investors continued to express widespread concerns related to the global oversupply, their fears were softened somewhat by Canadian wildfires in May and a string of rogue attacks on oil facilities in Southern Nigeria.
In mid-April, investors largely ignored a stalemate at a closely-watched meeting in Doha when Saudi Arabia broke off talks by insisting that Iran take part in a comprehensive pact to freeze production at January levels. At the same time, outages in Iraq and Libya have helped limit OPEC production from hitting fresh record-highs.
Investors continued to digest Wednesday's bullish inventory report when the the Energy Information Administration (EIA) said in its Weekly Petroleum Status said U.S. commercial crude oil inventories decreased by 4.1 million barrels last week for the week ending on June 24. At 526.6 million barrels, U.S. crude oil inventories are still at historically high levels for this time of year. Meanwhile, U.S. crude production fell sharply by 55,000 barrels per day to 8.622 million bpd, suffering its 22nd weekly decline over the last 23 weeks. Last year at this time, domestic production peaked at 9.6 million bpd, its highest level in four decades.