Wall Street also gained. In 1.13pm New York trading, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.1 percent, while the Nasdaq Composite Index gained 0.3 percent. In 12.58pm trading, the Standard & Poor's 500 Index added 0.3 percent.
US Treasuries fell, pushing yields on the 10-year note four basis points higher to 1.87 percent,
The Dow moved higher as gains in shares of Chevron and those of Cisco, last up 4.6 percent and 2.3 percent respectively, outweighed slides in shares of Nike and those of Goldman Sachs, last down 2.3 percent and 1.4 percent respectively.
The ECB policy meeting comes as their US Federal Reserve counterparts are set to gather next week. While economists expect the Fed to keep rates steady next week, recent economic data have heightened bets for rate hikes this year.
Meanwhile, a stronger US dollar spurred by a further quantitative easing by the ECB, helps too.
"If the ECB does more easing -- as we expect them to do -- then the Fed will worry mainly about what that does to the dollar," Torsten Slok, chief international economist at Deutsche Bank in New York, told Bloomberg.
To be sure, a Commerce Department showed US wholesale inventories unexpectedly rose in January, rising 0.3 percent. Wholesale inventories were unchanged in December after a revision from a previously reported decline of 0.1 percent. Sales fell 1.3 percent, following a 0.6 percent decline in December.
"Plenty of inventory pain remains in the pipeline," Michael Englund, chief economist at Action Economics in Boulder, Colorado, told Reuters. "Wholesale inventory growth has beaten sales growth since mid-2014 to leave a steep inventory-to-sales ratio spike that is usually only seen in recessions."
Oil rose after an Energy Information Administration showed gasoline supplies fell by a larger-than-expected 4.53 million barrels last week.
Shares of Chesapeake Energy soared, last up 7.2 percent in New York, after Bloomberg reported the company is considering selling some of its assets in Oklahoma's Stack shale field.
The Oklahoma City-based company recently interviewed advisers to oversee a potential sale, Bloomberg reported, citing the people who asked not to be identified because the matter isn't public. It has also held informal talks with potential buyers, they said.