LONDON: Oil prices rebounded on Thursday as traders digested mixed official data on US energy stockpiles that had triggered heavy losses a day earlier.

Brent North Sea crude for delivery in January rallied 81 cents to 78.69 dollars a barrel in early London trading.

New York's main contract, light sweet crude for January delivery jumped 70 cents to 77.30 dollars a barrel.

Analysts continued to digest the latest weekly US energy stockpiles data.

"One optimistic thing (for prices) was the distillate stocks which were down," said Benjamin Westmore, a commodities analyst at National Australia Bank.

The US Department of Energy (DoE) on Wednesday reported a 1.2-million-barrel fall in US distillate inventories last week -- much bigger than the 300,000-barrel decline forecast by analysts.

Demand for distillates, which include heating fuel, tends to rise at this time of year amid the northern hemisphere winter.

Oil prices had meanwhile fallen sharply on Wednesday -- losing more than 1.50 dollars -- as the market also reacted to news of a 2.1-million-barrel jump in US crude inventories in the week ending November 27.

The official figure was more than twice market expectations.

"Bearish US crude stock numbers served as yet another reminder that demand remains fairly sluggish, taking a much slower pace of recovery than anticipated," VTB Capital commodities analyst Andrey Kryuchenkov said on Thursday.

On Wednesday, the DoE added that gasoline (petrol) reserves had soared by four million barrels last week, while analysts had predicted a rise of only 700,000 barrels.

Kuwait's Oil Minister Sheikh Ahmad Abdullah al-Sabah said on Thursday that the emirate did not want any change to OPEC production quotas and believes there is a consensus to keep output unchanged.

Asked about Kuwait's position ahead of OPEC's ministerial meeting later this month, Sheikh Ahmad said: "No change" in production.

The minister also told reporters outside parliament that he believes there is consensus among members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries to maintain production quotas.

Kuwait, with a daily production of around 2.2 million barrels per day, is OPEC's fourth largest producer.

The oil exporters cartel will hold its next meeting on output on December 22 in Luanda, Angola.

Several OPEC members have already said they want to keep production unchanged because the current crude prices are satisfactory.

OPEC president Jose Maria Botelho de Vasconcelos of Angola said in November that a price of between 75 and 80 dollars a barrel was satisfactory.