London — Crude oil futures drifted downwards in European morning trading Thursday, giving back some of the previous day’s gains after a larger-than-expected crude stockdraw in the US had pushed both key benchmarks up by more than $2/b. Receive daily email alerts, subscriber notes & personalize your experience. Register Now At 1000 GMT, ICE October Brent crude futures were down 42 cents from Wednesday’s settle to $74.36/b, while the NYMEX October light sweet crude contract had lost 16 cents to $67.70/b. The market was surprised by the 5.8 million barrel draw in US crude stocks reported by the EIA, which was well above the consensus 3.37 million barrel draw indicated by an S&P Global Platts poll of analysts earlier in the week. “The commodities basket as a whole is soft this morning on the back of the trade talks between the US and China,” Geordie Wilkes, analyst at Sucden […]