How is the oil price and the barrel price floating?

"Investors are pricing in (hopes for) the ECB meeting tonight," said Natalie Rampono, a commodity strategist at ANZ.

"A positive response in both the ECB meeting and U.S. payroll data due later will be supportive of oil prices. If we see disappointment in the data or the meeting, however, there will be the risk of a sell-off steel barrel production line."

Soft U.S. nonfarm payrolls data for August, due on Friday, could strengthen the case for a third round of monetary easing, also known as quantitative easing (QE3), by the Federal Reserve.

"Further price direction is likely to come from any additional details from the ECB on how they intend to tackle the Euro crisis, as well as any hints of quantitative easing by the U.S. Fed," National Australia Bank analysts wrote in a note on Thursday.

"Either event could cause a sizeable move in prices. Balancing these competing influences, we expect a quarter average Brent price of US$109/bbl in December."

AFTER ISAAC

Also supporting oil prices, U.S. crude stocks fell sharply last week as Hurricane Isaac's passage through the Gulf of Mexico shut in production and closed ports, data from the industry's American Petroleum Institute showed on Wednesday.

Crude inventories fell by 7.2 million barrels in the week to Aug. 31, a much steeper drop than analysts' expectations for a drawdown of 5.3 million barrels.

The Energy Information Administration's report on oil inventories will follow at 1500 GMT on Thursday, delayed by a day after Monday's U.S. Labor Day holiday.

Most eastern Louisiana refineries affected by Isaac have restarted production since the storm passed, and producers have continued to restore offshore production.

About 680,749 barrels per day (bpd) of oil production remained offline on Wednesday, according to the U.S. government, just under half of Gulf of Mexico offshore output steel drum.