Oil prices move higher, but look to notch a fourth straight weekly loss

Price action

• West Texas Intermediate crude 
  CL00,
  +3.82%

  CL.1,
  +3.84%
  for December delivery was up $1.76, or 2.4%, to $74.66 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, with front-month prices more than 3% lower for the week. On Thursday, WTI was down 22.2% from its 52-week high of $93.68 on Sept. 27, placing it in bear-market territory, according to Dow Jones Market Data.

• January Brent crude
  BRN00,
  -0.19%

  BRNF24,
  -0.19%
  the global benchmark, added $1.87, or 2.4%, to $79.29 a barrel on ICE Futures Europe, trading nearly 3% lower for the week. On Thursday, Brent was off 19.81% from its 52-week high of $96.55 hit on Sept. 27 — just shy of bear-market territory.

• December gasoline
  RBZ23,
  +3.86%
  gained 1.9% to $2.1406 a gallon, while December heating oil
  HOZ23,
  +0.69%
  rose by 2.1% to $2.8073 a gallon.

• Natural gas for December delivery 
  NGZ23,
  -3.76%
  fell by 4% to $2.94 per million British thermal units.

Market drivers

Bulls were “licking their wounds,” after Thursday’s selloff, StoneX’s Kansas City energy team, led by Alex Hodes, said in a Friday note.

Read: Oil futures are slipping into a condition known as contango. What that means for prices.

Large money-managers no doubt played a large role in Thursday’s market action, but “physical markets are softening as the supply landscape looks increasingly better supplied — especially in crude markets,” they said.

Iraqi officials have said they expect exports fed by the 450,000 barrel per day Iraq-Turkey pipeline to resume any day now, following over half a year of closure, said the StoneX Kanas City energy team.

Crude-oil prices continued to slide this week, with the front-month WTI futures contract down more than 3% Friday following Thursday’s sharp decline, which was spurred by soft economic data out of the U.S. and China and rising supply.

“Demand dynamics have deteriorated with economic data both domestically and abroad starting to show slowing growth and still higher than desired inflation pressures,” analysts at Sevens Report Research wrote in Friday’s newsletter.

Friday’s modest rebound was being helped by a weaker U.S. dollar as the ICE U.S. Dollar Index
DXY
was off 0.3% at 104.09. Still, analysts noted that momentum would likely continue to carry prices lower amid fears of slowing global demand.

Read: OPEC will set an $80 floor for oil next year, say Goldman strategists

“Oil prices plummeted by 5% [Thursday] due to indications of an oversupplied physical oil market. Oil stocks in the United States have surged to their highest level in 2 1/2 months, while marginal oil-producing countries worldwide have increased their output, catching up with their lackluster performance over the past few months,” said Stephen Innes, managing partner at SPI Asset Management, in emailed commentary.

WTI and Brent crude futures were both on track Friday to log a fourth straight weekly decline.