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By Bloomberg

Oil rose in New York, halting a five-day declining streak, as Saudi Arabia’s comments on stronger demand countered signs that U.S. supplies will keep rising.

West Texas Intermediate futures gained as much as 0.8 percent, reversing an earlier decline. Oil demand is growing and the market has turned “calm,” Saudi Arabia’s Oil Minister Ali Al-Naimi said. U.S. crude inventories probably rose by 4 million barrels last week, a Bloomberg News survey shows before an Energy Information Administration report Wednesday.

Expanding U.S. stockpiles are exacerbating a global glut that drove prices almost 50 percent lower in 2014. Inventories have climbed about 20 percent above the five-year average level for this time of the year, according to the EIA. Supplies rose by 8.9 million barrels last week, the American Petroleum Institute said Tuesday, reports on Twitter showed.

“Naimi’s comments on better demand are supportive,” said Eugen Weinberg, head of commodities research at Commerzbank AG in Frankfurt. “Still, as U.S. crude oil stocks continue to rise there is no fundamental justification for a price recovery. Clearly the market is still oversupplied.”

West Texas Intermediate for April delivery rose as much as 40 cents to $49.68 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange and was at $49.47 at 1:24 p.m. London time. The contract closed at $49.28 on Tuesday. The volume of all futures traded was about 34 percent below the 100-day average for the time of day. Prices have decreased 7.4 percent this year.

Calm Markets

Brent for April settlement rose 54 cents to $59.20 a barrel on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange. The contract slid 24 cents to $58.66 on Tuesday. The European benchmark crude was at a premium of $9.71 to WTI. It reached $10.24 on Feb. 23, the widest since March.

“We want to see calm markets,” al-Naimi told reporters after a speech at a conference in Jazan in the nation’s southwest. Saudi Arabia will remain the largest oil exporter, he said, without specifying dates.

U.S. crude inventories probably rose to 429.6 million barrels last week, the Bloomberg survey shows. That would be the highest in weekly records dating back to August 1982.

Stockpiles at Cushing, Oklahoma, the delivery point for WTI, climbed by 2.4 million barrels last week, the API said according to reports on Twitter. The Washington-based group collects information on a voluntary basis from operators of refineries, bulk terminals and pipelines. The government requires that data be filed with the EIA. Supplies at the hub rose by 3.96 million barrels through Feb. 20, according to a Bloomberg storage model.

Incessant Builds

“The U.S. has seen incessant builds in inventories over the past few months,” Amrita Sen, chief oil analyst at Energy Aspects Ltd. in London, said in a report. “This trend seems set for the near-term, weighing on U.S. crudes.”

Global demand is growing, Al-Naimi told reporters. The world’s biggest oil exporter led the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries in its Nov. 27 decision to maintain output amid surging U.S. shale production.

President Barack Obama vetoed a Republican-backed bill to approve the Keystone XL pipeline that would have the capacity to carry 830,000 barrels a day of crude from oil sands in Alberta, Canada to the U.S. Gulf Coast via Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska. Obama rejected the bill because it interfered with a review being led by the State Department and he hasn’t decided on whether to approve a permit for the link, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Tuesday.

Refinery Strike

The United Steelworkers union plans to talk this week with Royal Dutch Shell Plc, which is bargaining on behalf of oil companies amid the biggest U.S. refinery strike in 35 years, USW International President Leo Gerard said Tuesday. A deal with the union, representing 30,000 oil workers in contract negotiations, would end a walkout at plants that account for almost 20 percent of the country’s refining capacity.

In China, a manufacturing gauge rebounded in February, suggesting stimulus efforts and a U.S. recovery are supporting factories in the world’s largest energy user. The preliminary Purchasing Managers’ Index from HSBC Holdings Plc and Markit Economics was at 50.1, exceeding the median estimate of 49.5 in a Bloomberg survey and up from January’s 49.7. Numbers above 50 indicate expansion.

“I expect the recovery to continue,” Jens Naervig Pedersen, a commodities analyst at Danske Bank A/S, said by e- mail from Copenhagen. “Better macro figures should feed through to oil demand and support higher prices. Inventories approaching full capacity is the key downside risk for the near term.”