London (Platts)--9Apr2010/1005 am EDT/1405 GMT

Crude prices remained above the Thursday's settle through the European morning Friday on the back of technical considerations with fundamentals still viewed as weak.

At 11:26 GMT, the May WTI contract traded up 75 cents at $86.14/barrel, while the May Brent contract on ICE was up 94 cents at $85.83/b. The two contracts have spent the day in the ranges $85.67-86.38/b and $85.10-85.94/b, respectively.

"Technically the flat price should still have upside, so being long is the right thing for [investors]," one trading source said. Support also stemmed from firmer equity markets Friday which moved up on encouraging retail sales figures from the US, upbeat comments on Greece's debt problems from the head of the European Central Bank, and expectations that Beijing may allow its currency to rise.

The dollar was down on the day as the euro traded at $1.3408 compared with Thursday's close of $1.3360.

Nevertheless while investors supported a flat price rally, the spreads on the prompt ICE Brent contract fell while reflecting a well supplied prompt market.

At 03:30 GMT Thursday the May June spread was valued at minus $0.66/b while at 11:29 GMT Friday the spread was $0.14/b lower at minus $0.80/b.

"It was impossible for crude markets to carry on pricing the weakness into differentials. That weakness needs to be shown in the benchmark structure and so it has come to pass. [There is] too much oil," one trading source said.

"The market is struggling to place supply," another source said. "This needs to be priced in."

"We are growing more confident that the wider crude oil contango will start to materialize into higher stocks in Cushing and this could start to be visible already in next week's DOE report," Olivier Jakob of Petromatrix said in a report. "The stock market is well supported and that is definitely bringing some buying into the flat price of crude oil but we continue to expect the rally on futures to work against the relative values [versus the stock markets] as the rally is not fueled by the physical realities of the oil system."

--Elzbieta Rabalska, elzbieta_rabalska@platts.com