Crude oil prices began trade with a gain today as traders turned their attention to U.S. monetary policy and China's latest move to accelerate growth through stimulus measures.

At the time of writing Brent crude was trading at $72.57 per barrel, with West Texas Intermediatechanging hands for $68.98 per barrel.

The climb followed an announcement from Beijing that it would loosen its monetary policy to fuel economic growth although the lack of details on what this loosening would entail exactly limited oil's gains.

Additional support for oil prices came from Chinese import data, which showed that shipments of crude had inched up in November, for the first time in months. The increase was quite solid, too, at 14% from October to 11.81 million barrels daily.

A U.S. oil inventory build as estimated by the American Petroleum Institute failed to reverse price gains, possibly because of its modest size of half a million barrels.