New York September 27 2023: Oil prices surged about 3% on Wednesday, after U.S. crude stocks fell more than expected, adding to worries of supply tightness amid OPEC+ production cuts.
Brent crude futures breached $97 a barrel, and was trading up $2.55 to $96.51 a barrel by 11:40 a.m. ET (1540 GMT). U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude futures (WTI) climbed $3.16 to $93.54. Both benchmarks touched their highest in intraday trading for this year.
U.S. crude stocks fell by 2.2 million barrels last week to 416.3 million barrels, government data showed, compared with analysts’ expectations in a Reuters poll for a 320,000-barrel drop.
Crude stocks at the key Cushing, Oklahoma, storage hub and the delivery point for U.S. crude futures, fell by 943,000 barrels in the week to just under 22 million barrels, the lowest since July 2022, data showed.
“The big news was the storage in Cushing. And that’s causing the whole complex to rally. The biggest concern for traders is Cushing getting near multi month, operational lows. That’s a bullish force for crude prices,” said Dennis Kissler, senior vice president of trading at BOK Financial.
