Investing.com - Oil prices were sharply higher during North American morning hours on Thursday, bouncing back from the prior session's losses as market players embraced riskier assets despite another big jump in U.S. oil inventories.
Crude oil for March delivery on the New York Mercantile Exchange jumped $1.03, or nearly 2%, to $53.79 a barrel by 10:00AM ET (15:00GMT), after falling 43 cents, or 0.8%, a day earlier.
Elsewhere, Brent oil for March delivery on the ICE Futures Exchange in London rallied $1.22, or about 2.2%, to $56.30 a barrel. The international benchmark declined 36 cents, or around 0.7%, on Wednesday.
Market players shrugged off concerns over rising U.S. oil inventories. The U.S. Energy Information Administration said on Wednesday that crude supplies rose by 2.9 million barrels last week to 488.3 million barrels.
Futures have been trading in a narrow range around the low-to-mid $50s over the past month as sentiment in oil markets has been torn between expectations of a rebound in U.S. shale production and hopes that oversupply may be curbed by output cuts announced by major global producers.
U.S. drilling activity has risen by more than 6% since mid-2016, taking it back to levels seen in late 2014, raising concerns that the ongoing rebound in U.S. shale production could derail efforts by other major producers to rebalance global oil supply and demand.
OPEC and non-OPEC countries have made a strong start to lowering their oil output under the first such pact in more than a decade, energy ministers said over the weekend as producers look to reduce oversupply and support prices.
Ministers said that 1.5 million barrels a day of the roughly 1.8 million in cuts pledged by OPEC and non-OPEC countries have already been taken out of the market.
January 1 marked the official start of the deal agreed by OPEC and non-OPEC member countries such as Russia in November last year to reduce output by almost 1.8 million barrels per day to 32.5 million for the next six months.
The deal, if carried out as planned, should reduce global supply by about 2%.
Elsewhere on Nymex, gasoline futures for February ticked down 0.1 cents, or 0.1% to $1.529 a gallon, while February heating oil climbed 2.7 cents, or 1.7%, to $1.639 a gallon.
Natural gas futures for March delivery rallied 11.1 cents, or 3.3%, to a one-week high of $3.457 per million British thermal units, as market players looked ahead to weekly storage data due later in the day.