London (Platts)--11Dec2009/858 am EST/1358 GMT

Global crude futures were higher in early European trading Friday as the dollar weakened marginally.

At 11:47 GMT the front-month ICE Brent contract traded at $72.37/barrel, up $0.51 from the overnight settle. The NYMEX WTI contract also traded higher at $70.99/b, a $0.45 rise.

The ICE Dollar Index lost 0.091 points, trading at 75.954.

Chinese data released Friday provided some support, according to sources, with industrial output in the Asian giant jumping 19.2% in November from a year ago. However, concerns remain about the health of other economies, including the US and Japan.

"WTI dipped below $70/barrel yesterday. The market looks oversupplied. However, WTI is a US dollar trade. When the dollar was stronger the market got whacked," a trading source said, adding "the market remains well supported above $70/b."

"Given the current technical formation on the Dollar Index... we will need to continuously monitor the capacity of the euro to maintain its support line at $1.47. WTI is currently oversold to the dollar correlation model by minus $5.50/b but that will not count for much if the short trading theme on the dollar is starting to shift," energy analyst Olivier Jakob said in a Petromatrix report.

Meanwhile, the International Energy Agency Friday raised its estimates of world oil demand over the next four years as the pace of the global economic recovery continues at better than expected rates.

Updating its medium-term global demand projections from June, the IEA said it now sees global oil demand growing by 1.4% or 1.2 million b/d a year on average between 2009 and 2014, from 84.9 million b/d to 90.9 million b/d.

The estimate is an average 1.9 million b/d higher than the IEA's first medium term oil demand estimate given in June.

--George Johnson, george_johnson@platts.com