Crude oil prices saw a rebound on Wednesday after
an industry group reported that stockpiles fell at the Cushing storage
hub in Oklahoma, delivery point for West Texas Intermediate oil
contracts.
U.S. crude was up 3.01%, at $44.58 a barrel while Brent rose 2.89% to $48.12 a barrel.
Crude stocks in Cushing declined by 748,000 barrels last week,
data from the industry group, the American Petroleum Institute, showed.
Overall U.S. crude stocks added 4.1 million barrels to 477.1 million barrels.
Price gains were capped, however, as oversupply is here to stay even after U.S. production cuts.
Investors are awaiting official inventory data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration due out later in the day.
Earlier, the Wall Street Journal reported that Persian Gulf countries refused to hold an oil-price summit with heads of state of both members and nonmembers of OPEC.
Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Kuwait don’t want
to hold a summit with other big producers as they don’t think
it would be successful in garnering commitments to reduce production enough
to bolster oil prices, the officials with knowledge of the matter said.
Last week, Venezuela called for global gathering of producers to discuss an oil slump that has persisted during 16 months and seen prices fall to less than $44 a barrel in 2015, after highs of $114 a barrel in 2014. A key reason for the collapse has been a big increase in supplies from the U.S., Russia and other producers.
