Investing.com - News of Saudi supply cuts pushed the price of oil higher by more than 3% today on world markets, demonstrating to some that the OPEC production deal is proceeding apace as planned.
The price of crude oil settled at $52.38 on Wednesday, up 3.07%. The price of Brent oil settled higher at $55.31 today, up 3.11%.
Gold closed higher today too, at $1190.80, up 0.53%, following the inflationary pressures produced by oil prices.
According to analysts, there is a growing bearish attitude towards oil prices.
The Energy Information Administration reports a build-up of 4.1 million barrels in crude oil inventories for the week to January 6. Yesterday, the American Petroleum Institute reported inventories were 1.5 million barrels higher for that time-frame.
Analysts expected EIA to report a build-up of 930,000 barrels.
Earlier, the agency reported a weekly decrease of 7.1 million barrels. According to the EIA, commercial crude oil inventories as of January 6 stood at 483.1 million barrels, within seasonal limits, near the upper end.
Refineries in the U.S. operated at 93.6% of capacity, processing 17.1 million barrels of crude and producing 9.7 million barrels of gasoline and 5.3 million barrels of distillate per day.
Gasoline inventories for the period were 5 million barrels higher than in the prior week, after an 8.3-million-barrel build during the last week of 2016.
Higher shale production in the U.S. is also seen as a pricing factor in the market, one that mitigates the OPEC cuts.