Oil prices edged up on Wednesday, supported by expectations of a fall in US crude inventories and by the ongoing outage of the North Sea Forties pipeline system.
US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures CLc1 were at $57.73 a barrel at 0312 GMT, up 17 cents, or 0.3 per cent, from their last settlement.
Brent crude futures LCOc1, the international benchmark for oil prices, were at $63.91 a barrel, up 11 cents, or 0.17 per cent, reports Reuters.
Oil prices have also been supported by the continuing outage of the Forties pipeline in the North Sea, which delivers crude underpinning Brent futures.
Operator Ineos hopes to be able to fix a crack in the pipeline, which can pump around 450,000 barrels per day of crude, within two to four weeks from Dec. 11.
Despite the North Sea outage and falling US crude inventories, oil prices have remained some way off their $65.63 and $59.05 per barrel recent highs for Brent and WTI respectively.
Traders said rising US crude production C-OUT-T-EIA, which has soared by 16 per cent since mid-2016 to 9.8 million bpd, was capping prices.
Most analysts expect US output to break through 10 million bpd soon, which would be a new record and take it to levels on par with top exporter Saudi Arabia and close to top producer Russia, which pumps around 11 million bpd.
