Light sweet crude for December delivery rose 2 cents to $57.90 a barrel in Asian electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. December Brent crude on London's ICE Futures Exchange gained 6 cents to $57.93 a barrel.

Prices had fallen Wednesday and Thursday after a weekly report showed a climb in U.S. crude oil inventories. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, U.S. crude oil inventories rose by 2 million barrels to 334.3 million barrels in the last week.

That was largely due to crude imports bouncing back up by 599,000 barrels per day from the previous week, when imports dropped off significantly.

Inventories of distillates, which include heating oil and diesel fuel, fell by 2.7 million barrels to 141.3 million barrels. Gasoline inventories fell by 2.8 million barrels to 204.6 million barrels. Furthermore, the EIA said demand for these products has recently accelerated.

The drops in product inventories were larger than anticipated, but the market wasn't too rattled, given that the report indicated that refiners are boosting production and fuel demand is still going strong.

"U.S. inventory figures initially appeared to be bullish due to higher-than-expected draws of distillates and gasoline, but eventually higher refinery runs stopped the uptrend," said Vienna's PVM Oil Associates.

Oil traders are watching to see how quickly the 11 members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries move to cut production after announcing that as a group they would reduce output by 1.2 million barrels a day starting Nov 1.