New York: Oil prices plunged after the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported a larger- than-expected increase in US crude stockpiles last week.
The West Texas Intermediate for December delivery moved down $1.18 to settle at $41.75 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, while Brent crude for December delivery decreased $1.75 to close at $44.06 a barrel on the London ICE Futures Exchange on Thursday, Xinhua reported. US crude supplies of last week gained 4.2 million barrels to 482.7 million barrels, beating market’s expectation and up 108.6 million barrels from a year earlier, said EIA in its weekly report.
Inventories at Cushing, Oklahoma, the delivery point for the US contracts, gained 2.24 million barrels to 55.3 million barrels. US crude production added 25,000 to 9.185 million barrels a day last week, said the report. Meanwhile, crude production of Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in October slashed 256,000 per day to average 31.38 million barrels per day (mb/d), according to OPEC’s monthly oil market report released on Thursday. The OPEC estimated that non-OPEC oil supply to average 57.24 mb/d in 2015, an increase of 0.72 mb/d.
