OIL PRICE: ABOVE $74 YET

REUTERS - Oil prices edged lower on Friday in quiet trading after three days of gains, but took support from Saudi Arabia halting crude transport through a key shipping lane, falling U.S. inventories and easing trade tensions between Washington and Europe.

Brent futures were down 5 cents at $74.49 a barrel by 0319 GMT, after gaining 0.8 percent on Thursday. They are heading for a near 2 percent gain this week, the first weekly increase in four.

U.S. West Texas Intermediate futures were 5 cents lower, at $69.56, after rising nearly 0.5 percent in the previous session. The contract is heading for a 1.3 percent weekly loss, a fourth week of declines.

Saudi Arabia said on Thursday it was "temporarily halting" oil shipments through the Red Sea shipping lane of Bab al-Mandeb after an attack by Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthi movement.

Any move to block the Bab al-Mandeb, which is between the coasts of Yemen and Africa at the southern end of the Red Sea, would virtually halt oil shipments through Egypt's Suez Canal and the SUMED crude pipeline that link the Red Sea and Mediterranean.

"The fundamentals of the oil market haven't really changed. We will have sporadic news coming out of the more volatile regions every now and again, but the market is still oversupplied," said Peter Lee, Asian oil and gas analyst at BMI Research in Singapore.

"The picture is getting a little better but it is not going to be until 2019 when we start to see more material signs of a deficit building in the market," he said. "We expect to see range-bound trading till the end of the year."

An estimated 4.8 million barrels per day of crude oil and refined products flowed through the Bab al-Mandeb strait in 2016 towards Europe, the United States and Asia, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

However, Saudi Arabia has the Petroline, also known as the East-West Pipeline, which mainly transports crude from fields clustered in the east to Yanbu for export. That could offset a bottleneck caused by Bab al-Mandeb's closure.

U.S. President Donald Trump and Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, the EU's executive body, struck a surprise deal on Wednesday that ended the risk of an immediate trade war between the two powers.

A trade war would likely hit demand for commodities like oil, which is used heavily in shipping, construction and other economic activity.

U.S. crude oil inventories last week tumbled more than expected to their lowest level since 2015, the EIA said on Wednesday, as U.S. gasoline and distillate stockpiles fell.

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Earlier: 

2018, July, 25, 10:20:00 OIL PRICE: NEAR $74 AGAIN REUTERS - Brent crude was up 54 cents, or 0.7 percent, at $73.98 a barrel by 0318 GMT. The global benchmark settled 38 cents higher at $73.44 a barrel on Tuesday, after climbing to as high as $74. U.S. West Texas Intermediate rose 24 cents, or 0.4 percent, to $68.76, having settled the previous session up 63 cents, or nearly 1 percent.

2018, July, 25, 10:10:00 ROSNEFT: OIL PRICE $75 PLATTS - "Our own budget is based on a price of $63/b. Today we see that prices are around $75/b, I think that prices will be at around this level -- $75, or a maximum of $80/b," Sechin said when asked about his expectations for price levels by the end of 2018.

2018, July, 25, 09:45:00 THE DIFFICULT IRANIAN SANCTIONS OGJ - “Russia already has improved its relations with Iran. Given its foreign policy stance toward the US, this could grow if it believes it would undermine the US position. Russia is taking a long-term view. It sees several obstacles, which it is determined to overcome.”

2018, July, 23, 13:55:00 OIL PRICE: NEAR $74 REUTERS - Brent crude oil LCOc1 rose $1.19 a barrel to a high of $74.26 before easing to around $74.05 by 1030 GMT. U.S. light crude CLc1 was up 70 cents at $68.96 a barrel.

2018, July, 23, 13:50:00 ЦЕНА URALS: $ 73,53905 МИНФИН РОССИИ - Средняя цена на нефть Urals за период мониторинга с 15 июня по 14 июля 2018 года составила $ 73,53905 за баррель, или $ 536,8 за тонну. Согласно расчетам Минфина России экспортная пошлина на нефть в РФ с 1 августа 2018 года понизится на $ 3,7 и составит $ 135,4 за тонну.

2018, July, 16, 11:05:00 OIL PRICE: NEAR $75 REUTERS - Brent crude futures were down 66 cents, or 0.9 percent, at $74.67 a barrel at 0645 GMT. U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude was down 57 cents, or 0.8 percent, at $70.43 a barrel.

2018, July, 16, 11:00:00 IEA: OIL SUPPLY ISSUES IEA - The re-emergence of Libya as a risk factor in global supply follows a series of attacks on key infrastructure that saw production plummet to around 500 kb/d in July from close to the 1 mb/d level seen for about a year.