For months, oil-market bears have been pointing at rising crude inventories and predicting that prices would stay subdued.
They’ve been wrong. Today, oil jumped above $56 a barrel for the first time since November, despite another increase in U.S. supplies.
Near-term crude futures in New York rose as high as $56.47 a barrel and were recently trading at $56.02, up $2.18 from Tuesday’s closing level.
The government’s weekly report on crude inventories showed a jump of 605,000 barrels, to 375.3 million, the highest since 1990. But that was far less than the 2.5-million increase that analysts surveyed by Bloomberg News had expected.
More surprising was that gasoline inventories fell 167,000 barrels to 212.4 million, instead of the 550,000-barrel gain that was expected.
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