By Enes Tunagur
LONDON (Reuters) – Oil prices rose more than 1% on Friday, poised for a weekly gain as trade tensions between top oil consumers China and the United States showed signs of easing and Britain announced its own U.S. trade deal.
Brent crude firmed by $1.19, or about 1.9%, to $64.03 a barrel by 1021 GMT. U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude was up $1.21, or about 2%, at $61.12. On the week, both contracts were on track to rise more than 4%.
Hopes that the trade war between the U.S. and China is cooling had helped Brent futures to jump by 3% on Thursday, said PVM analyst John Evans.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent will meet China’s top economic official Vice Premier He Lifeng in Switzerland on May 10 to work towards resolving trade disputes that have threatened oil demand.
“If the two set a date to start formal trade negotiations and agree to ratchet down their current steep tariffs against each other while talks carry on, markets will get a breather and crude could stack on another $2 to $3 per barrel,” said Vandana Hari, founder of oil market analysis provider Vanda Insights.
Meanwhile Chinese exports rose faster than expected in April while imports narrowed their decline, customs data showed on Friday, giving Beijing some relief ahead of tariff talks.
The country’s crude oil imports in April dipped from the previous month but were up 7.5% year on year, buoyed by stockpiling by state refiners during maintenance outages. [TRADE/CN]
Elsewhere, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies, known collectively as OPEC+, plan to increase output, maintaining pressure on oil prices.
Separately, U.S. President Donald Trump and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced that Britain had agreed to lower tariffs on U.S. imports.
A Reuters survey found that OPEC oil output edged lower in April as production declines in Libya, Venezuela and Iraq outweighed a scheduled increase in output.
(Reporting by Enes Tunagur in London, Mohi Narayan in New Delhi and Sudarshan Varadhan in Singapore, additional reporting by Seher Dareen in London; Editing by David Goodman)
