NEWS

Oil prices ended higher on Wednesday after U.S. government data revealed an unexpected decline in crude inventories, but a rise in gasoline stockpiles for the first time in four weeks kept gains in check.

The “data suggest that refiners have recovered from the [Hurricane] Harvey-related outages, and most importantly that downstream operations are returning to normal,” said Tyler Richey, co-editor of the Sevens Report.

November West Texas Intermediate crude rose 26 cents, or 0.5%, to settle at $52.14 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, recouping much of Tuesday’s nearly 0.7% decline.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration on Wednesday said domestic crude supplies fell by 1.8 million barrels for the week ended Sept. 22, after posting hefty increases in each of the last three weeks. The decline was contrary to the forecast for an increase of 1.3 million barrels by analysts surveyed by S&P Global Platts. The American Petroleum Institute reported late Tuesday a fall of 761,000 barrels, according to sources.

The highlight from the report wasn’t the draw in crude stocks, “but the reported cause of this draw,” said Troy Vincent, oil analyst at ClipperData. “The EIA showed both refinery runs and exports surging higher last week,” with crude-oil inputs at refiners up just over 1 million barrels a day from the previous week’s average.