Oil futures traded slightly higher early Thursday after shaking off a seventh straight weekly rise in U.S. crude inventories during the previous session.
Price action
-
West Texas Intermediate crude for March delivery
CL.1,
-0.22% CL00,
-0.22% CLH23,
-0.22%
rose 6 cents, or 0.1%, to $78.53 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. -
April Brent crude
BRN00,
-0.18% BRNJ23,
-0.18% ,
the global benchmark, gained 18 cents, or 0.2%, to $85.27 a barrel on ICE Futures Europe. -
March gasoline
RBH23,
-0.54%
was little changed at $2.463 a gallon, while March heating oil
HOH23,
-1.40%
slid 1% to $2.866 a gallon. -
March natural gas
NGH23,
-0.67%
was down 0.4% at $2.386 per million British thermal units.
Market drivers
U.S. crude inventories rose by 2.4 million barrels for the week ended Feb. 3, the EIA said Wednesday, a seventh straight rise. The figure was slightly larger than the average estimate of analysts surveyed by S&P Global Commodity Insights, but was in contrast to a 2.2 million barrel drop reportedly seen by the American Petroleum Institute, an industry trade group.
“Strong refinery runs over the week may have provided support to the market,” said Warren Patterson and Ewa Manthey, commodity strategists at ING, in a note.
Refinery utilization increased by 2.2 percentage points to 87.9%, the strongest level so far this year, they noted, while observing that stronger refinery runs contributed to large increases in product inventories. Gasoline and distillate fuel oil stocks increased by 5 million barrels and 2.9 million barrels, respectively.
Credit: marketwatch.com