• Home
• /
• Markets

WTI rises to 4-week high as US chill boosts fuel demand

WTI for March delivery rose as much as 61 cents to $97.97 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange and was at $97.92 at 10:38 a.m. London time. The volume of all futures traded was about 28 per cent below the 100-day average. Prices are down 0.6 per cent this month, the worst performance for January since 2010.

Brent for March settlement rose 17 cents to $108.02 a barrel on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange. The European benchmark crude was at a premium of $10.16 to WTI contracts on the ICE exchange, compared with $10.49 on Wednesday.

WTI advanced 2.4 per cent last week as stockpiles of distillates declined amid freezing weather in the U..that boosted demand for heating fuel. Inventories shrank by 4.6 million barrels last week, according to the EIA, the Energy Department’s statistical arm. They were forecast to fall 2.6 million in the Bloomberg survey.

Futures advanced as much as 0.6 per cent in New York. Demand for distillates, which includes heating oil, surged to the highest level in almost six years amid colder weather in the US, data from the Energy Information Administration showed.