Oil Tops $105 a Barrel as Supplies Decline
Oil continued its recent climb, rising to more than $105 a barrel Wednesday after a Department of Energy report showed that crude supplies fell last week, Bloomberg News reported.
Benchmark light sweet crude futures rose almost $2 to $105.45 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange after finishing at a 14-month-high $103.53 on Tuesday.
Oil last topped $105 in early May of last year, according to Bloomberg Nymex figures. Friday’s settlement price of $103.22 was the first time since then that oil has closed a trading day at more than $100 a barrel.
Crude inventories fell by 10 million barrels last week, DOE reported Wednesday. That was a bigger decline than the 3.2 million-barrel drop forecast by analysts, Bloomberg reported.
Gasoline supplies fell by 2.6 million barrels and distillates, which include diesel, rose by 3 million barrels last week, DOE said in its weekly inventory report.
