Dec 1 (Reuters) - ICE cotton rose on Friday buoyed by a
streak of supportive export sales reports over the last few
weeks, further supported by concerns of crop quality in top
producer Texas.

Cotton contracts for March settled up 0.47 cent, or
0.65 percent, at 73.28 cents per lb. It traded within a range of
72.66 and 73.41 cents a lb.

The contract registered its sixth consecutive weekly gain
and was up about 1.9 percent for the week.

Prices are up on "quality issues in Texas and as U.S. export
sales for the year are a little bit further ahead from where it
usually is at this time of the year," said Beau Stephenson,
Merchant at Omnicotton Inc.

On Thursday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported net
sales of 276,500 running bales for 2017-18, down 23 percent from
the previous week and 14 percent from the prior four-week
average, in its weekly export sales report.

Export sales for the natural fiber have totaled over 1.1
million bales in the last three weeks.

Total futures market volume fell by 13,634 to 24,498 lots.
Data showed total open interest gained 3,594 to 246,338
contracts in the previous session.

Certificated cotton stocks <CERT-COT-STX> deliverable as of
Nov. 30 totaled 47,729 480-lb bales, down from 47,951 in the
previous session.

The dollar index was down 0.11 percent. The Thomson
Reuters CoreCommodity CRB Index, which tracks 19
commodities, was up 0.80 percent
(Reporting by Nithin Prasad in Bengaluru
Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)