Oil holds loss on Fed's signal of higher interest rates to come

​Oil held losses driven by a big jump in U.S. crude stockpiles and as the Federal Reserve signaled it's not finished with rate hikes.

West Texas Intermediate futures traded near US$68 a barrel on Thursday after falling 1.7 per cent in the previous session. Fed officials paused in their run of interest-rate hikes but projected borrowing costs will go higher than previously expected to tame what Chair Jerome Powell called surprising persistent inflation.

The outlook led to renewed worries that higher rates will push the U.S. economy into a recession. It followed data that showed crude inventories in the country rose by the most in four months, while stockpiles at the key storage hub in Cushing, Oklahoma, swelled to a two-year high.