Crude oil futures rallied to their highest settlement in more than three weeks on Wednesday as U.S. government data revealed the largest rise in crude oil supplies in three months, according to Bloomberg MarketWatch.
March West Texas Intermediate crude rose $1.07, or 2%, to settle at $53.88 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange—the highest settlement since January 6.
April Brent crude, the global benchmark, rose $1.22, or 2.2%, to end trading at $56.80 on the London ICE Futures Exchange.
On Wednesday, the U.S. Energy Information Administration reported an increase of 6.5 million barrels in domestic crude oil supplies for the week ending January 27. That was the fourth consecutive weekly increase for crude oil inventories and the largest since the week ending October 28.
The figure was larger than the 5.8 million-barrel rise reported by the American Petroleum Institute late Tuesday, as well as the 2.2 million-barrel increase forecast by analysts polled by S&P Global Platts.
Meanwhile, March natural gas settled at $3.168 per million British thermal units on the New York Mercantile Exchange, up 5.1 cents, or 1.6%, ahead of an EIA weekly update on domestic supplies of the fuel due out Thursday.