WTI crude oil is trading higher after the Energy Information Administration (EIA) released its weekly Crude Oil Inventories report, which measures the weekly change in the number of barrels of commercial crude oil held by U.S. firms.
Compared to last week, inventories decreased by 10.584 million barrels. For reference, economists were expecting a decrease of 3.267 million barrels week-over-week. This means that demand was much stronger than anticipated. As a result, WTI is up 0.3% to $81.53 per barrel at the time of writing.
In addition, natural gas is up 2.13% as it hovers around $2.73 per MMBtu.
The United States Oil Fund ETF (USO) is up 0.16% to $73.44 today and up 20.93% over the past three months. Click here to see a list of energy stocks that can be influenced by the latest developments in the energy markets.