The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) released its crude oil inventories data on Wednesday. U.S. crude inventories dropped by 3.57 million barrels to 485.9 million in the week to December 04. It was the first decline since September.

Analysts had expected U.S. crude oil inventories to remain unchanged.

Gasoline inventories increased by 786,000 barrels, according to the EIA.

Crude stocks at the Cushing, Oklahoma, climbed by 423,000 million barrels.

U.S. crude oil imports increased by 274,000 barrels per day.

Refineries in the U.S. were running at 93.1% of capacity, down from 94.5% the previous week.