LONDON: Brent crude oil slipped below $112 a barrel on Wednesday as OPEC left its output target for the first half of 2014 unchanged, although the U.S. benchmark rose by almost $1 to a five-week high.
Brent crude for January delivery was 68 cents lower at $111.94 a barrel at 1322 GMT, after settling $1.17 higher in the previous session. U.S. crude was up $0.94 at $96.98 per barrel, after ending up $2.22 on Tuesday.
The 12-member Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries agreed on Wednesday to renew for the first half of 2014 a collective oil production cap of 30 million barrels a day, two OPEC delegates said.
U.S. crude oil was boosted by data from the American Petroleum Institute (API) showing a drop of 12.4 million barrels in domestic inventories. That snapped a 10-week streak of builds that had added nearly 36 million barrels.
This followed the news TransCanada Corp would begin operations at its Keystone XL pipeline on Jan. 3, allowing stockpiles of crude oil inventories at the Cushing, Oklahoma, oil hub to move to the U.S. Gulf Coast, where a large share of the country's refining capacity is concentrated.
"This is the start of a period of draws in U.S. crude stocks," said Bjarne Schieldrop, chief commodity analyst at SEB Bank.
An inventory report from the U.S. government Energy Information Administration (EIA) is due at 1530 GMT.
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