World oil prices remain steady
World oil prices held steady on Friday as caution prevailed before key non-farm payrolls data in US.
LONDON:-World oil prices held steady on Friday as caution prevailed before key non-farm payrolls data in the United States, and amid ongoing uncertainty over the looming "fiscal cliff," dealers said.
Brent North Sea crude for January added five cents to $107.08 per barrel in early afternoon deals in London.
New York s main contract, light sweet crude for delivery in January dipped 28 cents to $85.98 a barrel.
"Crude oil prices are trading sideways ahead of the release of the crucial US non-farm payroll data with the consensus for a 93,000 rise in November, compared to 171,000 in October," said analyst Myrto Sokou at Sucden Financial Research.
The jobs report is a key focus for the oil market because the United States is the world s largest crude consuming nation.
Ahead of the data, market sentiment was also dampened somewhat after Germany s Bundesbank warned that the eurozone powerhouse nation could sink into recession early next year, but was well placed to rebound strongly.
The German central bank, in its latest updated twice-yearly forecasts, said there were "indications that economic activity may actually fall in the final quarter of 2012 and the first quarter of 2013."
Recession is technically defined as two consecutive quarters of negative growth and many of Germany s eurozone neighbours have been pushed into recession, in some cases deep, by the region s long-running debt crisis.
The oil market had fallen heavily along with the euro on Thursday after the European Central Bank forecast that the eurozone would continue to contract next year and only return to growth in 2014.
In its regular quarterly staff economic projections, the ECB forecast that the euro area economy will shrink by 0.5 percent in 2012 and another 0.3 percent in 2013, instead of growing by 0.5 percent next year as previously estimated.
The Frankfurt-based central bank also opted not to cut its benchmark interest rate, but ECB chief Mario Draghi left the door open for one in the future.
Meanwhile this week, the lack of a breakthrough over the fiscal cliff in Washington has kept a cloud over the oil market.
Congress and the White House have until the end of the month to come up with new legislation to avert the harsh spending cuts and tax hikes programmed for January under the fiscal cliff package.
Investors remain fearful that the automatic measures could push the world s biggest economy into another painful recession that would ravage global demand for energy.
