Crude oil rebounded from the lowest price in more than three years as equities gained and traders bought contracts to close out bets that prices will fall.

Asian stocks rose for the first time in three days, following gains on Wall Street, as central banks took steps to contain the global recession with the Federal Reserve extending an emergency loan program and the Bank of Japan easing terms on lending to banks. OPEC intends to cut output when it meets on Dec. 17 in Algeria, Qatar's Oil Minister Abdullah bin Hamad al- Attiyah said today.

"It's still a case of the oil market looking to equities for some gauge as to how the global demand outlook is appearing,'' said Toby Hassall, an analyst at Commodity Warrants Australia in Sydney. "The recession call was seen as a negative for the market on Monday, but that possibly suggests that we're closer to coming out of the recession than people are thinking, and that could be seen as a positive.''

Crude oil for January delivery rose as much as US$1.14, or 2.4%, to US$48.10 a barrel in after-hours electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange, and traded at US$47.67 a barrel at 3:59 p.m. Singapore time.

Yesterday, futures fell US$2.32, or 4.7% to US$46.96 a barrel, the lowest settlement since May 20, 2005. Oil has tumbled 68%  from a record US$147.27 a barrel reached on July 11. Oil is set to decline 50%  this year, snapping six years of gains.

U.S. gasoline purchases last week rose from the previous week by 1.7%, MasterCard Inc. said in its SpendingPulse report. That is still down 0.3% t from a year earlier.