Oil prices remain supported after survey points to growth in US manufacturing

The price of oil remained supported Tuesday by a report showing a rebound in U.S. manufacturing for the first time in four months.

By early afternoon in Europe, benchmark oil for November delivery was up 18 cents to US$92.66 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

The contract closed up 29 cents at $92.48 in New York on Monday after a report showed U.S. manufacturing grew in September for the first time in four months.

In London, Brent crude, used to price international varieties of oil, was down 8 cents to $112.11 on the ICE Futures exchange.

“As there is still an oversupply of oil, prices are unlikely to make lasting gains for the time being,” said a report from Commerzbank in Frankfurt.

Some analysts said the lift in oil prices following the Federal Reserve’s announcement of a third round of bond buying on Sept. 13 was starting to wane.

Instead, the focus would likely “return to the deterioration in underlying economic and financial conditions that made the additional stimulus necessary in the first place,” analysts at Capital Economics said in an email commentary.

Last month, the Fed announced another round of bond buying, known as quantitative easing, and said it would consider providing additional support to the U.S. economy until the labour market showed substantial improvement.

A glimpse of the U.S. jobs picture will come Friday, when the US Labour Department releases employment data for September.

In other Nymex energy futures trading:

— Natural gas rose 1.7 cents to $3.497 per 1,000 cubic feet.

— Heating oil added 0.53 cent to $3.1411 per gallon.

— Wholesale gasoline fell 2.69 cents to $2.8932 per gallon.

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Pamela Sampson in Bangkok contributed to this story.

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