Oil futures settled at their highest level in about six weeks Wednesday after government data revealed a significant drop in domestic crude stockpiles for a third consecutive week, according to Bloomberg MarketWatch.
On the New York Mercantile Exchange, August West Texas Intermediate crude tacked on 72 cents, or 1.6%, to settle at $47.12 a barrel. The contract expires at Thursday’s settlement.
On the London ICE Futures Exchange, September Brent crude, the global benchmark, rose 86 cents, or 1.8%, to end trading at $49.70 a barrel.
“Over the past 15 weeks, U.S. oil inventories have fallen a good 13 times, and in most cases, the falls were more pronounced than expected,” said Fawad Razaqzada, technical analyst at Forex.com.
“The supply surplus is still there,” with the EIA data showing domestic crude oil inventories holding ground near their upper half of the average for this time of year, but “the recent trend of destocking is nonetheless encouraging news,” said Razaqzada.
The Energy Information Administration reported Wednesday that domestic crude supplies fell by 4.7 million barrels for the week ending July 14. That followed hefty declines in each of the previous two weeks.
The size of the weekly fall topped the forecast for a decline of 3 million barrels by analysts surveyed by S&P Global Platts. On Tuesday, the American Petroleum Institute reported that U.S. crude stocks had grown by 1.6 million barrels last week.
August natural gas settled at $3.066 per million British thermal units, down 2.2 cents, or 0.7%, ahead of the EIA’s weekly update on supplies of the commodity due Thursday.
