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LONDON : World oil prices rebounded Friday from earlier losses as sentiment was boosted by better-than-expected US company results and bargain-hunting ahead of the weekend.
In late afternoon trade, London's Brent North Sea crude for June delivery regained 44 cents to 53.50 dollars per barrel.
New York's main futures contract, light sweet crude for delivery in May, added 89 cents to 50.87 dollars a barrel.
The market rallied slightly on Friday after US companies Citigroup, General Electric and Google reported profits that topped market forecasts.
Wall Street's Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.28 percent to 8,147.97 in opening trades.
In earlier deals, oil prices had languished in the red as traders focused on on weak energy demand and high US crude stocks in a slowing global economy.
The market took a knock this week after news that US crude oil stockpiles had reached an 18-year pinnacle, suggesting that demand was tailing off in the world's biggest energy consuming nation.
"Demand is poor and inventories have built to ample or even onerous levels," said analyst Peter Beutel at US-based energy consultancy Cameron Hanover.
The US government's Department of Energy (DoE) said on Wednesday that crude stocks surged 5.6 million barrels in the week ending April 10 to reach 366.7 million barrels, which was the highest level since September 1990.
Analysts polled by Dow Jones Newswires had predicted a smaller weekly gain of 2.1 million barrels. Crude inventories are now 16.5 percent higher than at the same stage last year.
Traders continued to digest Thursday's news that China, the second-biggest energy consumer after the United States, announced its slowest growth in at least a decade, underlining the grave impact of the global economic crisis.
China posted first-quarter growth at an annual rate of 6.1 percent, down from 6.8 percent in the final three months of 2008.
The crude market was hit this week by oil demand forecast downgrades from the International Energy Agency (IEA) and the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).
Prices slid on Monday after the IEA slashed its 2009 global forecast by one million barrels per day (bpd) to 83.4 million bpd, about 2.4 million bpd less than in 2008 and the lowest level since 2004.
In further gloomy news on Wednesday, OPEC cut its estimate for world crude demand again, arguing that a "devastating contraction" in consumption would keep prices under pressure in the months ahead.
OPEC estimated that demand would contract by 1.37 million bpd or 1.6 percent in 2009.
The 12-nation cartel, which pumps 40 percent of world oil supplies, holds its next production meeting in Vienna on May 28.
- AFP /ls
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