Brent crude futures settled up 19 cents, or 0.32%, at $59.31 a barrel. The front-month U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures contract, which expired Thursday, gained 49 cents, or 0.9%, to settle at $53.78 a barrel. The more-active second-month WTI benchmark was up 45 cents, or 0.8%, at $53.94 a barrel. (Filepic shows oil storage at Cushing, Oklahoma.)
NEW YORK: Oil prices were up slightly on Thursday after the U.S. government reported a much smaller-than-anticipated rise in crude stocks, but gains were capped by worries about the spread of Coronavirus outside China.
U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) data showed crude inventories rose only 414,000 barrels last week, much less than the 2.5 million barrel build predicted by analysts in a Reuters poll. [EIA/S]
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