Brent crude oil is up 1.3% at $72.36 a barrel and WTI futures are up 1.2% at $68.96 a barrel after the former closed down 1.6% on Thursday following the Chinese government saying it had tapped into its state oil reserves in order to ease some pressure in raw-material prices. "Releasing from state reserves is not great for sentiment, given that one would expect it to weigh on crude-oil import demand," says ING's Warren Patterson. Meanwhile, EIA data released Thursday reflected the impact of Hurricane Ida, with U.S. crude oil inventories down by 1.53 million barrels over the last reporting week and U.S. gasoline inventories falling to their lowest stock level since November 2019.