On the New York Mercantile Exchange, light, sweet crude futures for delivery in June traded at $100.81 a barrel at 0509 GMT, up $0.04 in the Globex electronic session. June Brent crude on London’s ICE Futures exchange fell $0.17 to $107.96 a barrel. China’s trade surplus widened to $18.46 billion in April, from $7.71 billion in March, with better-than-expected export and import numbers. Its purchases of major industrial commodities also grew. China’s April crude-oil imports came in at 27.88 million metric tons, or 6.8 million barrels a day, the highest level on record on a daily basis, surpassing January’s record of 6.7 million barrels a day. “While demand was gradually recovering in April after a sluggish holiday season, the surge in imports likely reflected strategic stockpiling rather than refinery demand,” analyst Sijin Cheng at Barclays said. Nymex WTI crude retained the bulk of its overnight gains on a surprise […]