Oil drifted lower in Asia hours, with WTI &.....>

OIL: Oil drifted lower in Asia hours, with WTI & Brent both ~$0.20 softer at

writing after U.S. Pres. Trump signed the Hong Kong Bill. U.S. futures markets

will be subjected to adj. trading hours on Thursday owing to Thanksgiving.

- Wednesday saw WTI settle $0.30 worse off, while Brent lost $0.20. The bulk of

the pressure came on the back of the weekly DoE inventory data revealing a

"surprise" build in headline crude stocks in the latest week, in a similar

manner to the API estimate, although to a slightly more modest degree.

Elsewhere, there was a much larger than exp. gasoline stock build, a slightly

larger than exp. distillate stock build and a marginal drawdown of stocks at the

Cushing hub. Refinery utilisation unexp. edged lower. Elsewhere, the latest

weekly Baker Hughes rig count data pointed to 3 fewer active oil rigs in the

U.S. Crude did recover from worst levels on Wednesday, potentially aided by

issues at a couple of major U.S. refineries & struggles around Libya's el-Feel

{~70K bpd) oilfield. Focus continues to fall on next week's OPEC+ gathering,

with Wednesday seeing TASS report comments from the Russian Energy Minister,

suggesting that output quota adjustments will be spoken about at the meeting.