Oil prices hit a nine-month high early on Thursday after U.S. government data showed that crude stockpiles fell last week and on optimism over a coronavirus relief package in the United States.<\/p>\n
Brent crude futures rose by 28 cents, or 0.6 per cent, to $51.36 a barrel at 0116 GMT, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures rose by 27 cents, or 0.6 per cent, to $48.09 a barrel. Both benchmarks hit their highest since early March.<\/p>\n
U.S. crude inventories fell by 3.1 million barrels in the week to Dec. 11, the Energy Information Administration said. This was more than analysts’ expectations of a 1.9-million-barrel drop, after stockpiles surged in last week’s data.<\/p>\n
“U.S. production also fell… the first time since late October,” ANZ analysts said in a note on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Refinery crude runs fell by 253,000 barrels per day in the past week, EIA said. Refinery utilization rates fell by 0.8 percentage point in the week.<\/p>\n
Also boosting oil prices, the Fed said on Wednesday it would stick with its policy of low interest rates while legislators moved closer to agreeing on an additional $900 billion of COVID-19 aid, including $600 to $700 stimulus checks and extended unemployment benefits.<\/p>\n
The United States on Thursday also expanded its campaign to deliver COVID-19 vaccine shots into the arms of doctors and nurses on the frontlines of a pandemic that has killed more than 2,500 Americans a day, which also supported oil prices.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Oil prices hit a nine-month high early on Thursday after U.S. government data showed that crude stockpiles fell last week and on optimism over a coronavirus relief package in the United States. Brent crude futures rose by 28 cents, or 0.6 per cent, to $51.36 a barrel at 0116 GMT, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures rose by 27 cents, or 0.6 per cent, to $48.09 a barrel. Both benchmarks hit their highest since early March. U.S. crude inventories fell by 3.1 million barrels in the week to Dec. 11, the Energy Information Administration said. This was more […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[133],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-390067","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oil-gas"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390067","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/39"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=390067"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390067\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=390067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=390067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=390067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}