Oil prices ebbed on Wednesday, December 21, triggered by a surprise surge in U.S. crude inventories as refineries hiked output and crude imports rose by 1.1 million barrels a day from the previous week.
Brent crude oil futures were down 33 cents on the day at $55.02 a barrel by 12:02 p.m. EDT (1702 GMT), while U.S. crude futures were down 22 cents at $53.08 a barrel.
U.S. commercial crude oil inventories rose by 2.3 million barrels to a total of 485.4 million barrels, the U.S. Energy Information Administration reported.
Analysts expected stockpiles to fall for a fifth consecutive week, by 2.5 million barrels, according to a Reuters poll.
The crude build was offset in part by a drop in stockpiles at the Cushing, Oklahoma delivery hub and declines in fuel stocks.
Gasoline stocks fell by 1.3 million barrels, compared with analyst expectations for a 1.4 million-barrel gain. Distillate stockpiles, which include diesel and heating oil, fell by 2.4 million barrels, versus expectations for a 1.2 million-barrel drop, the data showed.
Price gains for December were roughly 10 percent, which would be the strongest performance in the final month of the year in six years, Reuters reports.
Brent’s rally is its largest so far for any December since 2010, thanks to an unprecedented wave of investor buying ahead of an anticipated drop in supply from some of the world’s top exporters next year.
Hourly volume in the front-month contract was around 2,300 lots on Wednesday, compared with an average of 2,400 for hourly volume in the second half of the year.
