Oil Futures Gain Further as API Data Show Decline in Crude Stocks

Oil futures gain in Asian trading on Wednesday, adding to their overnight strength after the American Petroleum Institute data showed a bigger-than-expected decline in U.S. crude and gasoline inventories for last week.

--December Nymex light sweet, crude on the New York Mercantile Exchange was up 0.4% at $56.42 a barrel in the Globex trading session. January Brent also rose by the same percentage margin to $61.17, while December gasoline rose 0.9% at $1.7475 a gallon.

--The American Petroleum Institute, an industry group, said late Tuesday that its data for the week showed a 5.1-million-barrel decrease in crude supplies, a 7.7-million-barrel decrease in gasoline stocks and a 3.1-million-barrel decline in distillate inventories. If the data is confirmed later Wednesday by the official Energy Information Administration data, prices could gain further, say traders.

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

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

November 01, 2017 00:36 ET (04:36 GMT)