Oil Continues Rallying as Data Remain Bullish

Oil rallied further in Asian trading on Wednesday, hitting fresh three-year highs as a U.S. inventory reading showed a big drop last week in oil supplies there.

--February light, sweet crude on the New York Mercantile Exchange was recently up 0.8% at $63.46 a barrel in the Globex trading session. March Brent rose 0.5% to $69.18.

--The American Petroleum Institute late Tuesday said that U.S. oil supplies fell 11.2 million barrels last week. That compared with a drop of 2.5 million anticipated to be disclosed in Wednesday's government reading.

--Uncertainty over whether U.S. President Donald Trump will extend U.S. sanctions relief to Iran is also supporting oil prices, already facing potential supply snags due to anti-government protests in the nation.

Write to Biman Mukherji at biman.mukherji@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

January 09, 2018 23:43 ET (04:43 GMT)