* Oil builds on 7 pct surge, near two-week high above $44
* US crude, gasoline stocks seen rising, distillates to
fall
* China GDP rose 6.8 pct in Q4, 2008 growth slowest in 7
yrs
By Eadie Chen
SINGAPORE, Jan 22 (Reuters) - Oil rose to $44 a barrel on
Thursday after jumping nearly 7 percent a day ago, buoyed by
growing expectations that OPEC's supply cuts may help balance a
market still facing the spectre of weakening demand.
U.S. crude oil stocks are expected to have risen by 1.4
million barrels and gasoline stocks by 1.9 million barrels in
weekly data due out later in the day, potentially adding to the
gloom of lacklustre economic growth and sharply lower refinery
operations in China, the world's second-biggest consumer.
U.S. light crude for March delivery <CLc1> rose 45 cents to
$44 a barrel by 0344 GMT, adding to Wednesday's $2.71 jump to
the highest closing price since Jan. 6.
London Brent crude <LCOc1> rose 28 cents to $45.30 a
barrel.
Prices were climbing for a fourth day as the market's focus
shifted toward global conditions and away from the oil storage
limitations at the Cushing, Oklahoma, delivery point for NYMEX
crude that had depressed the February contract.
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries
(OPEC) is fully enforcing its deepest ever oil supply curbs and
this should be enough to boost prices, OPEC President and
Angolan oil minister Botelho de Vasconcelos told Reuters.
[]
But some analysts said the group's 4.2 million barrel per
day (bpd) cuts since September might not be enough to turn the
tide on a market that has plunged from a record high above $147
a barrel in July as the global economic crisis hits oil
consumption.
"They have to cut four to five million barrels a day in
quotas; they have to get a good portion of that in real, wet
barrels off the market," said Adam Sieminski, chief energy
economist for Deutsche Bank. []
Further evidence of the ailing state of the world's No. 2
oil consumer emerged on Thursday, with China reporting growth
of just 6.8 percent in the fourth quarter, just shy of market
expectations for 7 percent. For the whole of 2008, the economy
expanded by 9 percent, the slowest rate in seven years.
While crude oil imports in December rose 11.6 percent,
refinery production rates fell 7.4 percent from a year earlier,
the biggest such drop in seven-and-a-half years, suggesting
deep damage to end-user demand. []
The International Monetary Fund is set to sharply cut
growth forecasts this month, IMF Managing-Director Dominique
Strauss-Kahn said on Wednesday. []
A Reuters poll on Wednesday showed industry analysts
expected global oil demand to contract by 430,000 barrels per
day in 2009, deeper than they had forecast previously, as the
economic crisis spreads to the developing world.
[]
(Editing by Jonathan Leff)
