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Prices on crude oil fell by more than 2% on Wednesday after data from the Energy Information Administration showed a larger-than-expected drawdown of US reserves.
Futures on Brent crude (BZ=F), the international benchmark, fell by around 2.3% to trade below $64 per barrel, while futures on the US benchmark West Texas Intermediate crude (CL=F) fell by a similar margin to trade around $59.30.
EIA data showed a weekly decrease of 3.4 million barrels in US commercial crude oil inventories. Oil analysts had been expecting a draw of only half that size, at 1.7 million barrels for the week, according to Bloomberg estimates.
Gasoline inventories built by 2.3 million barrels from last week, according to EIA data, far overshooting analyst predictions of 50,000 barrels’ worth of growth. Diesel fuel stocks grew by 200,000 barrels from the prior week, moving against analyst estimates of a 1.14 million-barrel draw.
Oil prices have been trending downward throughout the year as the market has begun to accept and price in an increasingly widespread view that oil is headed for a major oversupply glut in 2026 as OPEC+ continues to produce barrels while demand dips.
In a pair of notes published earlier this week, analysts at Goldman Sachs predicted that crude oil prices will rise through the back half of the 2020s, while natural gas (NG=F) prices will fall.
The forward curve on WTI futures contracts has spent much of the past year in backwardation, implying a looser market to come and matching with expectations of a 2026 glut. But as of Tuesday, the curve is “threatening contango,” or market conditions implying an increase in prices and a tighter market in the future, said Robert Yawger, director of energy futures at Mizuho Securities USA.

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