Oil prices made meager gains in early Asian trade on Thursday on expectation that U.S. crude production would be trimmed and pre-Thanksgiving settlements. On the New York Mercantile Exchange, light, sweet crude futures for delivery in January traded at $43.25 a barrel at 0334 GMT, up $0.21 in the Globex electronic session. January Brent crude on London’s ICE Futures exchange rose $0.06 to $46.23 a barrel. On Wednesday, the Energy Information Administration reported U.S. crude inventories grew 1 million barrels in the week ended Nov. 20. The figure was below the 2.6 million-barrel growth estimated by industry group American Petroleum Institute. Data also showed U.S. production of crude slid by 17,000 barrels a day to 9.165 million barrels, compared with the previous week, but the four-week average daily production of 9.173 million barrels was still 144,000 barrels above the same period last year. “This clearly has not been enough […]