UPDATED 8:01 AM EST, December 7, 2012
Benchmark oil for January delivery was up 30 cents to $86.56 per barrel at late afternoon Bangkok time in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract fell $1.62, or 1.8 percent, to finish at $86.26 per barrel in New York.
Prices moved higher ahead of the anticipated release of inflation, retail sales and factory output data from China on Sunday.
Analysts at Gao Hua Securities Co. in Beijing said they expect industrial production growth for November to rise to 10 percent from a year earlier, up from 9.6 percent in October.
