Oil rebounds in Asia on short-covering, Brent flirts with $ 40

Oil benchmarks on both sides of Atlantic resumed its upside momentum in the Asian trades this Friday, reversing a temporary slide witnessed yesterday.

Oil recovers ahead of US rigs count data

Currently both crude benchmarks are rebounding higher, with WTI rallying +1.80% to $ 37.94 while the Brent oil rises +1.39% to $ 40. Oil prices stage a solid rebound in Asia as markets resort to profit-taking on their short positions after the recent drop, as focus now shifts towards the Bakers and Hughes oil rigs count report due later today.

The black gold ended a 2-day rally and fell into the negative territory on Thursday after news that the Keystone pipeline outage news was outweighed by higher weekly inventories report.

Market intelligence firm Genscape reported a build of 255,804 barrels at the Cushing, Oklahoma delivery hub for US crude futures in the week to Tuesday.

Meanwhile, nothing of relevance for the commodity in the data ahead in terms of US economic news, and hence, oil markets will continue to monitor the developments surrounding April 17 Doha meeting as also the US rigs count data.