West Texas Intermediate (WTI) climbed during the Asian trading session on Wednesday amid the cold weather in the US, the world’s biggest oil consumer.
Futures for the North American WTI crude for March delivery added 0.60% higher to $97.88 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange at the time of writing, while the Brent crude for March settlement rose 0.35% higher at $106.09 per barrel on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange at the same time.
The European benchmark crude was at a premium of $8.39 to WTI.
On Tuesday, reports from the American Petroleum Institute (API) revealed a rise in crude stockpiles by 384,000 barrels last week, compared to forecast of a gain of 2.55 million; while distillate fell by 1.5 million barrels. A drop of 1.8 million barrels was seen in US gasoline inventories in the previous week ending Jan 31.
Data from the Energy Information Administration is expected to show a rise in stockpiles by 2.27 million barrels last week, compared to 113.7 million barrels seen last week.
In the US, the manufacturing sector expanded in January at its slowest pace in eight months, coming in at 51.3, missing estimates and down from the previous reading of 56.5 seen in December; according to reports complied by the institute for Supply Management (ISM) manufacturing PMI.
The cold weather in the central US is expected to be followed by cold rain today, according to Tom Kline, a meteorologist at AccuWeather Inc.
A strong freezing storm will breeze through east with heavy snow from central Kansas to the Northeast, according to the National Weather Service.
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