The price of crude oil was moving higher Wednesday morning as the NYMEX trading floor opens today after two days of unscheduled shutdown. Oil prices are also helped by news of a fire in a hydrotreater at BP Plc's refinery in Texas.
Light Sweet Crude Oil (WTI) futures for December delivery, added $0.74 to $86.42 a barrel. Yesterday, oil settled higher on some upbeat macroeconomic data from the U.S., and the Bank of Japan's move to further expand its asset-purchase program. Investors also weighed reports that the damage from Hurricane Sandy may be much lower than originally anticipated.
Tuesday after the market hours, the API said US crude oil inventories rose 2.10 million barrels, while gasoline stocks eased 173,000 barrels in the weekended October 26. Analysts expected crude oil inventories to jump only 1.50 million barrels and gasoline stocks to add 200,000 barrels last week.
This morning, the U.S. dollar slipped back to a weekly-low versus the euro and sterling. The buck continued to slip from its 4-month high versus the yen and trading lower against the Swiss franc.
In economic news, inflation in euro zone as measured by the harmonized index of consumer prices eased to 2.5 percent in October from 2.6 percent in September, data from Eurostat revealed. The outcome was in line with economists' forecast.
Meanwhile, Germany's retail sales grew at a faster-than-expected pace in September, boosting hopes that private spending will underpin economic activity in the third quarter. Data released by the Federal Statistical Office showed that retail sales climbed 1.5 percent on a monthly basis, which was faster than both August's marginal 0.1 percent rise and expectations for a 0.3 percent growth. Sales rose for the second straight month.
Traders will look to the results of the Institute of Supply Management-Chicago's business survey for October, due out at 9:45 am ET. Economists expect the business barometer index based on the survey to increase to 51 from 49.7 in September.
