oil futures climbed on thursday extending on a gain from a day earlier when us government data revealed a nearly 10 millionbarrel weekly drop in domestic crude inventories still tough talk from federal reserve chair jerome powell and other global central bank chiefs on wednesday on the need to keep tightening monetary policy in order to bring down inflation continued to cap gains analysts said on wednesday wti settled 28 higher and brent rose 25 after the energy information administration reported that us commercial crude inventories fell by 96 million barrels for the week ended june 23 the eia report showed weekly inventory gains of 600000 barrels for gasoline and 100000 barrels for distillates however powell participating in a panel discussion at an ecb monetary policy forum in sintra portugal reiterated wednesday that a strong majority of fed policy makers expect to deliver two more quarter percentage point interestrate increases this year powell also played down the idea the fed has shifted to a pattern of delivering rate hikes at every other meeting saying that he wouldnt take moving consecutive meetings off the table at all see powell and other central bankers vow to keep fighting inflation until there is evidence of success crude prices had difficulty following through with gains early thursday on account of hawkish comments from the us fed as inflationary concerns continue said analysts at ing in a note higher interest rates can raise the potential for a recession which may lead to lower energy demand oil continues to face upside headwinds in the form of oversupply risks and worriesabout economic growth analysts at sevens report research wrote in thursdays newsletter if both of those risks fail to materialize via a resilient global economy or additional production cuts from saudi arabia then oil can rally throughout the summer although its unclear either or both of those events will occur oil futures looked to end the month on friday with a gain but traded lower quarter to date naturalgas futures meanwhile looked to recover some of wednesdays more than 4 decline after the us energy information administration reported on thursday a slightly smallerthanexpected weekly rise in us stockpiles domestic naturalgas supplies in storage rose by 76 billion cubic feet for the week ended june 23 analysts called for a storage increase of 83 billion cubic feet on average according to a survey conducted by sp global commodity insights this content was created by marketwatch which is operated by dow jones  co marketwatch is published independently from dow jones newswires and the wall street journal