Oil Heads for Second Weekly Gain After Surprise Stockpile Drop

Futures in New York are up 1.5 percent this week after closing at the highest level in two weeks on Thursday. While the U.S. is pumping near record volumes, exports also jumped to a four-month high last week, helping drain the nation’s stockpiles.

Oil stocks in the biggest U.S. storage hub plunged to the lowest level in more than three years. While crude struggled after the best January performance in more than a decade, it’s now finding its footing again as the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies including Russia pledge to persist with output curbs to re-balance the market, and demand remains robust.

U.S. crude exports rose to about 2 million barrels a day last week, according to Energy Information Administration data Thursday. Nationwide inventories declined the most in five weeks to 420.5 million barrels, in contrast to a 2.9 million gain forecast in a Bloomberg survey. Stockpiles at the storage hub of Cushing, Oklahoma, shrank for a ninth straight week to 30 million barrels.

The country’s crude production ticked lower for the first time since early January to 10.3 million barrels a day, the EIA report also showed. Baker Hughes data due on Friday will show the number of rigs drilling for oil in America, which had risen to a two-year high last week.
more detail at:  https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-23/oil-set-for-2nd-weekly-gain-after-surprise-u-s-inventory-drop

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