By Shariq Khan
NEW YORK (Reuters) -Oil prices settled higher on Thursday, bouncing off early losses after the White House said U.S. President Donald Trump was not happy when he learned that Russia attacked Ukraine with missiles and drones overnight.
Brent crude futures settled up 57 cents, or 0.8%, at $68.62 a barrel, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude futures rose 45 cents, or 0.7%, to close at $64.60 a barrel.
Russia hit Ukraine with deadly missiles and drone strikes early on Thursday, killing at least 21 people in Kyiv, city officials said. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian military said it used drones to hit two Russian oil refineries overnight.
Trump will make a statement on the situation later on Thursday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters. Both oil benchmarks were down about 1% earlier in the session, but turned positive after her comments.
Traders are also watching for India’s response to pressure from the U.S. to stop buying Russian oil, after Trump doubled tariffs on imports from India to as much as 50% on Wednesday.
Russian oil exports to India are set to rise in September, dealers said, defying the U.S. pressure.
Oil prices were under pressure earlier in the session as traders braced for lower fuel demand after the U.S. Labor Day long weekend.
Crude oil supply is also set to rise due to an OPEC+ plan to raise September output by 547,000 barrels per day.
Weaker demand and higher supply will cause oil inventories to rise, Ritterbusch and Associates said in a note.
“That will be weighing on energy futures across the spectrum as summer turns into fall, and as gasoline demand tapers off and refiners shift to the lower-priced winter grade product,” they said.
Further pressuring oil prices, Russian crude supplies to Hungary and Slovakia through the Druzhba pipeline have restarted after an outage caused by a Ukrainian attack in Russia last week, Hungarian oil company MOL and Slovakia’s economy minister said on Thursday.
(Additional reporting by Sam Li in Beijing and Siyi Liu in Singapore; Editing by Louise Heavens, Ros Russell, David Gregorio and Diane Craft)
