Oil climbs 3% as steep US crude stocks draw adds to supply concerns
Oil prices surged 3% on Wednesday to the highest settlement in 2023, after a steep drop in U.S. crude stocks compounded worries of tight global supplies.
Brent crude futures closed up $2.59, or 2.8%, at $96.55. It breached $97 a barrel during the session.
U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude futures (WTI) climbed $3.29, or 3.6%, to $93.68. The session high was over $94.
U.S. crude stocks fell by 2.2 million barrels last week to 416.3 million barrels, government data showed, far exceeding the 320,000-barrel drop analysts expected in a Reuters poll.
Crude stocks at the Cushing, Oklahoma, storage hub, delivery point for U.S. crude futures, fell by 943,000 barrels in the week to just under 22 million barrels, the lowest since July 2022, data showed.
«The market is being led up by storage numbers as we are getting to the minimum operational inventories at Cushing,» said Andrew Lipow, president of Lipow Oil Associates.
