Crude oil futures settled higher on Wednesday as data confirmed OPEC’s compliance with the curbed production agreement, according to Bloomberg MarketWatch.
On the New York Mercantile Exchange, February West Texas Intermediate crude rose $1.43, or 2.8%, to settle at $52.25 a barrel.
March Brent crude, the global benchmark, advanced $1.46, or 2.7%, to end trading at $55.10 a barrel on the London ICE Futures Exchange.
Earlier on Wednesday, the Energy Information Administration reported that domestic crude oil supplies rose by 4.1 million barrels for the week ending January 6, more than twice the 1.5 million-barrel rise reported by the American Petroleum Institute late Tuesday and the 1.75 million-barrel increase expected by analysts polled by S&P Global Platts forecast.
The biggest story from the report is a 190,000 barrel-per-day production increase from the lower 48 states “that pushed total domestic production to 8.946 million barrels per day—its highest point since April 15, 2016, according to Troy Vincent, oil analyst at ClipperData. “This could foreshadow future trouble for OPEC and those wishing to limit global supply.”
“It seems that the market is more impressed with Saudi compliance than with another big build in supply,” said Phil Flynn, senior market analyst at Price Futures Group.
Meanwhile, February natural gas fell 5.4 cents, or 1.7%, to settle at $3.224 per million British thermal units on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
