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By Bloomberg

Oil held above $50 a barrel after advancing the most in two weeks as investors weighed Saudi Arabia’s outlook for greater demand against record U.S. crude stockpiles.

Futures were little changed in New York after climbing 3.5 percent on Wednesday, the most since Feb. 12. Demand is growing and the market has turned “calm,” Saudi Oil Minister Ali Al- Naimi said. U.S. crude supplies rose more than forecast to 434.1 million last week, the highest level in weekly estimates that started August 1982, according to the Energy Information Administration.

World demand rose 2.2 million barrels a day in December from a year earlier, the strongest growth in 18 months, London- based Energy Aspects said this week. Prices sank almost 50 percent in 2014 amid an increasing global oversupply as Saudi Arabia led a decision in November by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries to maintain the group’s output.

“When the Saudis come out and talk demand in a market that’s short -- up it goes,” Jonathan Barratt, the chief investment officer at Ayers Alliance Securities in Sydney, said by phone. “We’re talking about the controller of OPEC, the market will listen. WTI is under-priced at these levels.”

West Texas Intermediate for April delivery was at $50.68 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange, down 31 cents at 1:21 p.m. Sydney time. The contract rose $1.71 to $50.99 on Wednesday. The volume of all futures traded was about 50 percent below the 100-day average.

‘Calm Markets’

Brent for April settlement was 18 cents lower at $61.45 a barrel on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange. It gained $2.97, or 5.1 percent, to $61.63 Wednesday. The European benchmark crude was at a premium of $10.77 to WTI. It closed at $10.64 on Feb. 25, the widest since January 2014.

“We want to see calm markets,” Al-Naimi said after a speech at a conference in Jazan in Saudi Arabia’s southwest. The nation will remain the largest oil exporter, he said.

The kingdom, OPEC’s biggest producer, pumped 9.72 million barrels a day in January, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The group maintained its collective quota at 30 million barrels a day at a Nov. 27 meeting amid surging U.S. shale output.

U.S. crude supplies expanded by 8.43 million barrels through Feb. 20, more than double the median estimate in a Bloomberg News survey. Production climbed by 5,000 barrels a day to 9.29 million a day, the most in weekly EIA estimates going back to January 1983.

Inventories at Cushing, Oklahoma, the delivery point for WTI, climbed to 48.7 million, the highest level since June 2013, according to the Energy Department’s statistical arm. The U.S. oil boom has been driven by a combination of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, which has unlocked shale formations from Texas to North Dakota.