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1st LD Writethru: Oil prices rise as U.S. supplies fall

Xinhua, May 21, 2015 Adjust font size:

Oil prices gained Wednesday after government data showed that U.S. inventories dropped last week, the third weekly fall in crude supplies.

U.S. crude supplies for the week ended May 15 decreased 2.7 million barrels to 482.2 million, 90.9 million barrels more than a year earlier, said Energy Information Administration (EIA) in its weekly report released on Wednesday. The inventories at Cushing, Oklahoma, the delivery point for the U.S. contract lost 240,000 barrels to 60.44 million barrels.

For the week, U.S. crude production also retreated 112,000 barrels to 9.262 million barrels a day amid ongoing declines in the number of U.S. rigs actively drilling for oil, which also fell 8 to 660 during the week.

Analysts believed that low crude prices forced U.S. shale oil producers to slow down the output.

The U.S. benchmark, Light, Sweet Crude Oil for July delivery moved up 99 cents to settle at 58.98 U.S. dollars a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. In London, Brent North Sea crude for July delivery, the global benchmark, moved up 1.01 U.S. dollars to close at 65.03 dollars a barrel. Endite