OIL PRICE: NOT BELOW $56

REUTERS, BLOOMBERG, OILPRICE - Oil prices edged up on Wednesday, rising for a third day on signs that markets are gradually tightening after years of oversupply, although the outlook for 2018 remained less certain.

Brent crude futures, the international benchmark for oil prices, were trading at $56.75 per barrel at 0649 GMT, up 14 cents, or 0.25 percent, from their last close. Brent also rose 2 percent the previous day.

U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures were at $51.09 a barrel, up 17 cents, or 0.33 percent, from their last settlement. Prices rose 2 percent the day before to back above $50 a barrel.

Traders said they would look to U.S. fuel inventory data on Wednesday and Thursday for indicators on price direction.

A U.S. federal holiday on Monday delayed the release of weekly inventory numbers by a day. The American Petroleum Institute (API) is scheduled to release its data for last week at 2030 GMT on Wednesday, and the U.S. Department of Energy's report is due Thursday.

Overall, analysts said short-term conditions were tightening.

"We ... raise our Q1 2018 (Brent) price forecast by $5 per barrel to $56," Barclays bank said. "Inventory draws will likely cause the market to refocus on geopolitical risks and low levels of spare capacity."

Price support is also coming from economic growth, which the International Monetary Fund forecast late on Tuesday would be 3.6 percent globally this year and 3.7 percent for 2018.

Brent has so far averaged $52.70 per barrel this year. By the end of the year, Barclays said it expected Brent to have averaged around $53 per barrel.

Despite this, Barclays said oil could dip again in 2018, with second-quarter 2018 Brent likely to fall back to $48 a barrel, thanks largely to rising global output.

A pact between the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and other producers including Russia to cut output by 1.8 million barrels per day (bpd) in order to prop up prices is due to expire by the end of March 2018.

Discussions to extend the pact are taking place, but production elsewhere is rising.

"It has ... been a tricky year for OPEC," said Lukman Otunuga, analyst at futures brokerage at FXTM. "Although Saudi Aramco plans to make 'the deepest customer allocation cuts in its history' by cutting 560,000 bpd next month, its impact could be diluted if the U.S. shale producers see this as a Christmas gift."

U.S. producers are not participating in any pledge to restrain supply, and output has risen by 10 percent this year to over 9.5 million bpd.

Speaking in an interview at the Reuters Global Commodities Summit, Ian Taylor, chief executive of top oil trader Vitol, said on Tuesday that U.S. output would climb by another 0.5 million to 0.6 million bpd next year before flattening out.

Overall, Taylor said, markets were "boringly rangebound" and that "margins are very, very tight".

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Earlier:

October, 9, 21:55:00 OIL PRICE: NOT BELOW $55 Global benchmark Brent crude LCOc1 was down 2 cents at $55.60 a barrel at 11:31 a.m. EDT (1531 GMT). Earlier in the session it touched a three-week low of $55.06. It ended last week 3.3 percent lower, its biggest weekly loss since June 2017. U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude futures CLc1 were trading at $49.46, up 17 cents. They came close to a four-week low when they fell to $49.13 earlier in the session. WTI’s losses last week came to 4.6 percent.

October, 6, 13:00:00 OIL PRICE: ABOVE $56 YET Global benchmark Brent crude futures were up 7 cents at $57.07 a barrel at 0848 GMT. Week on week, the contract was set for a near 1 percent loss, snapping a five-week winning streak that was the longest since June 2016. U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude was at $50.59, down 20 cents. It was set to close the week down more than 2 percent, the biggest weekly loss in three months.

October, 6, 12:50:00 NEW OIL COALITION As the world's two largest oil producers, Saudi Arabia and Russia have led the 24-country OPEC/non-OPEC coalition in its 1.8 million b/d supply cut, which is scheduled to end in March.

October, 4, 23:59:00 OIL PRICE: ABOVE $55 U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures CLc1 were at $50.16 per barrel at 0648 GMT, down 26 cents, or 0.5 percent, from their last close. They fell below $50 per barrel earlier in the session. Brent crude futures LCOc1 were down 22 cents, or 0.4 percent, at $55.78 a barrel.

October, 4, 23:30:00 ЦЕНА URALS: $ 50,55 Средняя цена нефти марки Urals по итогам января - сентября 2017 года составила $ 50,55 за баррель.

October, 2, 15:00:00 OIL PRICE: ABOVE $56 Brent crude, the global benchmark, was down 12 cents at $56.67 a barrel at 0846 GMT. It notched up a third-quarter gain of around 20 percent, the biggest third-quarter increase since 2004 and traded as high as $59.49 last week. U.S. crude was down 17 cents at $51.50. The U.S. benchmark posted its strongest quarterly gain since the second quarter of 2016.

October, 2, 14:45:00 OIL PRICES: $50 - $60 AGAIN A snap poll conducted by price reporting agency S&P Global Platts showed that two-thirds of conference attendees thought crude would hold in a narrow range of between $50 and $60 a barrel in the coming year, exactly where it was today.