Oil Prices Find Floor After Falls on Supply Glut Woes

Oil prices edged up on Thursday, supported by news of an attack on a Nigerian pipeline and moving off a five-week low reached the previous session when U.S. crude stocks data compounded doubts that a glut in global oil supplies could be reduced.

Brent crude was up 25 cents, or 0.5 percent, at $47.11 a barrel by 1200 GMT. U.S. crude was up 7 cents, or 0.15 percent, at $45.41 per barrel.

Prices were underpinned by concerns about supply disruptions after militants in the Niger Delta attacked a pipeline operated by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation on Wednesday.

Still, futures have not recovered to levels traded in October when market participants were cautiously optimistic that a preliminary agreement by OPEC to cap or cut production would lead to a more balanced market.

After four days of falls, Brent and WTI contracts hit five-week lows after data on Wednesday showed stockpiles of oil in the United States had risen by a record amount of 14 million barrels last week.

"Following a host of negative news, which culminated with another erratic U.S. inventory report, oil has stabilised and moved higher, driven by short-covering and the sense that it may have become too pessimistic about an OPEC deal being reached," said Ole Hansen, head of commodity strategy at Saxo Bank.

A softer dollar also buoyed prices by making dollar-denominated oil less costly for importing countries.

The Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries meets on Nov. 30 to agree a production cut after two years of global oversupply and low prices that have hurt states' budgets.

But many market watchers are sceptical that a concrete deal can be reached or enforced; doubts which have persistently put a lid on any longer-term price rally.

OPEC had hoped that major non-OPEC producers, particularly Russia, would join any deal to cut production. While Russia has signalled this could be possible, crude output hit a post-Soviet record of 11.2 million barrels per day in October.

"There is a massive market-share battle going on between Russia and Middle Eastern oil producers that sees Saudi oil ending up in Poland and Russian crude in traditional OPEC markets in the Far East," London broker PVM said, citing reasons why it believes Russia will not participate in a deal.

"Last but definitely not least ... Russia is in dire economic difficulty and needs cash."

(By Sabina Zawadzki, Additional reporting by Mark Tay in Singapore)