Investing.com - Crude oil prices held weaker in Asia on Monday as business surveys set a mixed tone and with markets in China shut for a holiday.
On the New York Mercantile Exchange, crude oil for delivery in June fell 0.89% to $45.51 a barrel. Brent crude edged down 1.16% to $46.82 a barrel.
On Tuesday, comes the closely-watched Caixin manufacturing PMI for April, which last came in at 49.7.
At the weekend, the China April CFLP manuacturing index came in at 50.1, below expectations, but hanging onto expansion territory. The CFLP service PMI eased to 53.5 from 53.8. The semi-official manufacturing PMI from the China Federation of Logistics and Purchasing and National Bureau of Statistics slid from the first over-50 reading in eight months in March.
On the positive side, this is still the second consecutive over-50 reading - the first time that's happened since the middle of last year. Although gauges of output, new orders and export orders slipped marginally, they are still around the average of the past year.
The CFLP tried to downplay the slide in the manufacturing PMI, saying in an accompanying statement that "the stabilizing and recovering trend of the economy remains intact. The modest drop in the index is a normal fluctuation."
The U.S. Institute of Supply Management is to publish a report on manufacturing activity. The U.S. and China are the world’s two largest oil consuming nations and manufacturing numbers are used as indicators for fuel demand growth.
In the week ahead, oil traders will be focusing on U.S. stockpile data on Tuesday and Wednesday for fresh supply-and-demand signals.
Last week, oil futures pulled back from the highest level since November on Friday, as news of a monthly climb in production from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries underlined concerns over a global supply glut.
But oilfield services provider Baker Hughes said Friday the number of rigs drilling for oil in the U.S. fell by 11 last week to 332, a fresh six-year low. At this time last year, drillers were operating 679 oil rigs.
On the ICE Futures Exchange in London, Brent oil for June delivery rallied to an intraday peak of $48.29 a barrel, the most since November 9, before turning lower to close at $47.37, down 40 cents, or 0.84% for the day.
OPEC's oil output in April rose to the highest level in recent history, a Reuters survey found on Friday, as production increases led by Iran and Iraq more than offset a strike in Kuwait and other outages.
According to the survey, OPEC’s April output increased to 32.64 million barrels a day from 32.47 million barrels a day a month earlier, reiterating concerns related to the massive supply glut on global energy markets.
Brent futures prices are up by roughly 45% since briefly dropping below $30 a barrel in mid-February, despite the collapse of talks at a Doha summit in April aimed at achieving a production freeze among OPEC and Non-OPEC producers. OPEC meets on June 2 in Vienna and may discuss the freeze initiative again.
However, analysts warned that market conditions remained weak due to an ongoing glut. U.S. crude oil stockpiles rose by 2.0 million barrels last week to a record-high of 540.6 million barrels, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.