2024.03.0821:41:00UTC+00Oil Futures Settle Lower, Shed About 2.5% In Week

Oil prices fell on Friday amid uncertainty about the outlook for demand from China as data showed a drop in the country's oil imports in the first two months of the year, compared to December 2023.

Customs data showed Chinese imports of crude oil rose 5.1% in the first two months of 2024 from a year earlier. However, imports were down 5.7% compared to December 2023, the data showed.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) had said on Thursday that the global oil market "is relatively well supplied with demand growth slowing, while supply is increasing from the Americas."

"Depending on the pace of oil demand growth going forward, the strength of summer demand, any unexpected outages, we see that the market (is) relatively well supplied this year," said Toril Bosoni, the head of the agency. The IEA expects "relatively calm markets" even though OPEC' recently decided to extend supply cuts, she added.

West Texas Intermediate Crude oil futures for April ended lower by $0.92 or about 1.2% at $78.01 a barrel. WTI crude futures shed about 2.5% in the week.

Brent crude futures settled at $82.08 a barrel, losing $0.88 or about 1.1%.

Traders also digested the mixed jobs data from the Labor Department.

The data said non-farm payroll employment surged by 275,000 jobs in February, while economists had expected employment to jump by 200,000 jobs.

However, the report also said job growth in December and January was downwardly revised to 290,000 and 229,000 jobs, respectively, reflecting a net downward revision of 167,000 jobs.

The unemployment rate rose to 3.9% in February from 3.7% in January. Economists had expected the unemployment rate to come in unchanged.