Oil prices growing after release of statistics from US

Growth in global oil prices on April 14 accelerated noticeably - up to 4 percent - after the publication of official data from the US Department of Energy on oil reserves in the country, the reduction of which exceeded analysts’ forecasts, according to trading data, Report informs referring to Prime agency.

As of 18:45 (GMT+4), the price of June futures for North Sea Brent oil blend was growing by 3.94 percent to $66.18, and for May futures for WTI oil - by 4.25 percent to $62.74 per barrel. Before the publication of statistics, oil prices were up more than 2 percent.

Earlier on April 14, the US Department of Energy published data according to which commercial oil reserves in the country over the past week fell at a record pace since February - by 5.9 million barrels and reached 492.4 million barrels. At the same time, analysts had expected a decrease in the indicator by only 2.9 million barrels.

In addition, data on gasoline and distillate stocks turned out to be better than forecasted. Thus, gasoline inventories in the US increased over the past week by 0.3 million barrels against the forecast of growth by 0.8 million, and distillate stocks decreased by 2.1 million barrels, contrary to the forecast of growth by 0.907 million barrels.

Investors were very optimistic about the data from the US Department of Energy against the background of a previously published report by the International Energy Agency (IEA), which predicted an increase in oil demand by 5.7 million barrels per day at the end of the year.