Crude oil was slightly up in London trading Tuesday, but with low volumes evident ahead of the Christmas holiday period. Brent crude for February delivery was up 24 cents, or 0.2%, to $111.81 a barrel on ICE Futures Europe. U.S. crude-oil futures for January were down 1 cent a barrel at $98.90 on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Violence in South Sudan, one of east Africa’s oil producing states, has worsened in recent days. The country’s oil minister Stephen Dhieu Dau sought to assuage fears that production would be affected, saying “oil continues to flow normally in Upper Nile state,” according to a report in the Sudan Tribune. “There is no problem there. It is only in Unity state where there are some issues but it has not stopped flowing. We only reduced the number of workers in Unity state to minimal level because of security reasons”, he said […]