Crude oil futures ended with small gains on Thursday, 29 January 2015 at Nymex but only after the U.S. benchmark sank below the $44-a-barrel level for the first time in nearly six years in a trading environment shadowed by a rapidly growing glut of crude.
Light, sweet crude for March delivery on the New York Mercantile Exchange rose 8 cents, or 0.2%, to close at $44.53 a barrel. It was a choppy trading session, with the contract earlier dipping as low as $43.58, its lowest level since March 2009.
A day earlier, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said U.S. oil supplies rose by 8.9 million barrels in the week ended 23 January 2015, higher than the increase of around 3.5 million barrels expected by markets. At 406.7 million barrels, U.S. inventories are at their highest since 1924.
Government data showed the number of U.S. workers making first-time claims for unemployment benefits fell to 265,000 in the week ended 24 January 2015 from a revised 308,000 a week earlier. The fall was much larger than economists had expected and took initial claims to the lowest level since 2000. Economists had warned that the figures could be impacted by a reporting week shortened by the Martin Luther King Day holiday.
Among other energy products, heating oil for February fell 1.34 cents, or 0.8%, to $1.6184 a gallon, while gasoline for the same month rose 0.87 cents, or 0.7%, to $1.3537 a gallon.
March natural gas fell 12.3 cents, or 4.3%, to $2.719 per million British thermal units.