Oil heads for weekly loss as futures inch higher on Friday

Price action

• West Texas Intermediate crude for April delivery
  CL00,
  -0.85%

  CL.1,
  -0.85%

  CLJ23,
  -0.85%
  rose 27 cents, or 0.4%, to $75.66 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, after snapping a seven-day losing streak in the Thursday session. The U.S. benchmark was on track for a 1.2% weekly fall.

• April Brent crude
  BRNJ23,
  -0.63%,
  the global benchmark, rose 36 cents, or 0.4%, to $82.57 a barrel on ICE Futures Europe. May Brent
  BRN00,
  -0.73%

  BRNK23,
  -0.73%,
  the most actively traded contract, was up 39 cents, or 0.5%, at $82.34 a barrel, on track for a 0.4% weekly fall.

• Back on Nymex, March gasoline
  RBH23,
  -1.58%
  fell 0.2% to $2.375 a gallon, while March heating oil
  HOH23,
  -0.37%
  rose 1.4% to $2.75 a gallon.

• March natural gas
  NGH23,
  +4.71%
  rose 1.8% to $2.355 per million British thermal units.

Market drivers

Crude has fallen as Russian supply has continued to flow into the market, though it plans to cut production by 500,000 barrels a day in March as it reacts to a further round of price caps and sanctions that were a further response to the invasion of Ukraine.

At the same time, U.S. crude inventories have continued to build, with domestic inventories rising by 7.6 million barrels last week, according to government data released Thursday.

Don’t miss: The real impact of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on commodities

However, two Russian companies have announced that they plan to reduce their exports in March, presumably due at least in part to low prices, said Barbara Lambrecht, commodity analyst at Commerzbank, in a Friday note.

“If there are increasing signs that this is likely to happen, and if the [International Energy Agency’s] assessment of declining Russian production proves accurate, prices are likely to be pushed up,” she wrote.

Meanwhile, a slight upturn in purchasing managers index readings for the manufacturing sector in the U.S. and China — the two largest markets — should lend additional support, Lambrecht said.