WTI crude oil gained almost 3% to settle at $70.10 per barrel in today’s trading session, which is likely attributable to a stronger-than-expected jobs report. Indeed, the ADP Nonfarm Employment Change report came in at 278,000 compared to forecasts of 170,000.
However, 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 increased by 4.488 million barrels. For reference, economists were expecting a decrease of 1.101 million barrels week-over-week. This means that demand was weaker than anticipated. Nevertheless, this wasn’t enough to dampen sentiment.
On the other hand, natural gas fell 4.77% to close at $2.158 per MMBtu range.
In tandem with oil prices, the United States Oil Fund ETF (USO) is also up 3.35% to $62.66 at the time of writing. Here is a list of energy stocks that can be influenced by the latest developments in the energy markets.
