Heating oil prices rise on inventory drop

9 December 2009

Heating oil prices climbed in the Asian trading session this morning (December 9th) as commodities markets reacted to an unexpected drop in US crude inventories.

A report from the American Petroleum Institute showed crude stocks dropped 5.82 million barrels last week, signalling a recovery in demand far stronger than traders had anticipated.

Meanwhile, assurance from Saudi Arabia about the health of Gulf economies also helped to settle commodities markets.

Commenting on the inventories data, Tetsu Emori, a fund manager at Tokyo-based Astmax, told Reuters: "The draw in crude stocks is huge, even though oil imports have been rising. Refining rates were up 1.3 percentage points and we could be seeing the first signs of a recovery in fuel demand in the United States."

Attention will now turn to the Energy Information Administration which will later today publish its demand figures for last week. The US energy department figures are generally figured more robust as they also include gasoline, propane and distillates such as heating oil.

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