NEW YORK: Oil prices fell after the US government reported record high crude inventories, but the market still came off its lows as weekly stock builds turned out to be less than feared.
US commercial crude oil inventories rose 7.7 million to a record 425.6 million barrels last week, the sixth straight week levels reached seasonal record highs, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) said. Benchmark Brent and US crude futures, which fell about 5 percent on Wednesday after release of the API numbers, came off their session lows on the EIA data.
“It is still a bearish number though it provides a little bit of a relief rally if you’d been going with the API estimate,” Tariq Zahir, managing member at New York’s Tyche Capital Advisors said, explaining why the market pared losses.
Brent was down 85 cents at $59.68 a barrel by 1740 GMT, after falling as low as $57.80. On Tuesday, it had hit a two-month high of $63. US crude slipped $1.35 to $50.79, off the session low of $49.15. Oil has rallied over the past month, with Brent gaining 35 percent from a mid-January low on short-covering by traders. Reuters
