Oil up 1 pct after swing on mixed data; U.S. crude at Nov highs

* Brent on track to 6 pct rise on week; WTI 4 pct

* Investors weigh tighter global supply vs Cushing build

* Nigeria crude outage also boosts prices

(New (KOSDAQ: 160550.KQ - news) throughout, updates prices, market activity and comments

to settlement)

By Barani Krishnan

NEW YORK, May 12 (Reuters) - Oil prices rose 1 percent in

volatile trade on Thursday, with U.S (Other OTC: UBGXF - news) . crude hitting six-month

highs as investors weighed a forecast for tighter global

supplies against signs of another storage build at the hub for

U.S. crude futures.

Worries of a major outage in Nigerian crude also boosted the

market, some traders said.

"It (Other OTC: ITGL - news) was a mixed bag, with both longs and shorts trying to

defend positions based on the data that appealed most to them.

The bulls prevailed," said Phil Flynn, analyst at the Price

Futures Group in Chicago.

Brent crude futures settled up 48 cents at $48.08

per barrel.

U.S. crude's West Texas Intermediate (WTI) futures

rose 47 cents to settle at $46.70. It hit a six-month high of

$47.02.

With (Other OTC: WWTH - news) that, Brent was on track for a weekly rise of 6 percent

and WTI 4 percent, continuing a broad uptrend that has added

about $20 to a barrel from lows in January and February.

WTI could advance to almost $51 in the near-term "on pure

technical merits", said Jim Ritterbusch of Chicago-based oil

markets consultancy Ritterbusch & Associates.

"But from a longer-term perspective, we still see this

market setting up for a hard fall next month" from a potential

dollar rally or weak Chinese economic data, he added.

WTI initially rallied early, after the International Energy

Agency raised its 2016 global oil demand growth forecast to 1.2

million barrels per day (bpd) from 1.16 million in April.

Brent also jumped as the IEA noted a combined decline of

450,000 bpd in Nigerian, Libyan and Venezuelan output from a

year ago.

Prices then slid on data from market intelligence firm

Genscape that showed a stockpile build of 548,923 barrels at the

Cushing, Oklahoma delivery hub for WTI futures during the week

to May 10. Cushing is one of the most closely watched datapoints

for WTI.

Some traders said a stronger dollar also pressured

oil. The dollar rose about 0.3 percent against a basket of

currencies, making greenback-denominated oil more expensive to

holders of other currencies.

But oil prices rebounded late and settled up.

Some traders cited reduced production in Nigeria's benchmark

Qua Iboe (BFO-QUA) crude. Nigeria is Africa's largest oil

producer and Qua Iboe the largest crude grade, set to account

for 317,000 bpd of exports in June. It was not immediately clear

by how much of the output was reduced by the pipeline problem.

(Additional reporting by Sarah McFarlane in LONDON, Henning

Gloystein in SINGAPORE and Osamu Tsukimori in TOKYO; Editing by

David Evans and David Gregorio)