West Texas
Intermediate rose after a government report showed that inventories at Cushing,
Oklahoma, the delivery point for the contract, dropped a seventh week. Brent
oil slid.
WTI rose as
much as 0.7 percent. Supplies at Cushing fell 989,000 barrels to 29.8 million
last week, the lowest level since January 2012, the Energy Information
Administration said. Futures also climbed after Enterprise Products Partners LP
said yesterday that operations on the expanded Seaway line to
WTI for
April delivery advanced 58 cents, or 0.6 percent, to $100.28 a barrel at 10:43
a.m. on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract traded at $100.23 before
the release of the report at 10:30 a.m. in
Brent for
May settlement dropped 68 cents, or 0.6 percent, to $106.11 a barrel on the
London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange. Trading volume was 13 percent lower
than the 100-day average. The European benchmark’s premium to WTI for the same
month slipped to $7.04 a barrel.
Cushing
stockpiles have fallen since the southern portion of the Keystone XL pipeline
began moving oil to the
Total crude
inventories climbed by 5.85 million barrels to 375.9 million, the EIA said. A
2.75 million-barrel gain was projected, according to the median of 11 analyst
responses in a Bloomberg survey.
Supplies of
distillate fuel, a category that includes heating oil and diesel, fell 3.1
million barrels last week to 110.8 million, the lowest level since May 2008,
according to the EIA, the Energy Department’s statistical arm. Gasoline
stockpiles dropped 1.47 million barrels to 222.3 million.