Oil prices continued to ramp higher on Friday morning as the market assess the possibility of additional consumption of global petroleum through the substitution of higher priced gas to oil as well as the uncertainty of the US releasing their strategic reserves. Lending support was the return of Chinese demand from holiday as well as reports from OPEC+ on Monday that that they will not be increasing monthly production by more than initial expectation of 400k barrels per day. Crude stocks increased for the second week in a row, building 2.345 million barrels with stocks now 72.040 million barrels below last year and 32.037 million barrels below the five-year average, according the EIA. This comes on the back of exports falling to the lowest since early August to 2.114m bpd as well as imports increasing to 7.035m bpd, the highest since mid-July. The market remains bullish trend with today’s range seen between 73.46 – 79.81.