Commodities: Crude futures fly higher on surprise fall in US inventories

Crude futures are flying north on Wednesday afternoon as investors welcome a surprise fall in US crude inventories, soothing worries about a global supply glut.

At about 16:13 BST, Nymex-priced West Texas Intermediate was up 3.08% to $51.84 a barrel, while Intercontinental Exchange-quoted Brent added 2.59% to $53.02 a barrel.

Energy Information Administration figures revealed US crude stores fell 5.2m barrels to 468.7m barrels in the week to 14 October.

Crude oil refinery inputs averaged about 15.4m barrels a day, 182,000 barrels less than the previous week's average. Imports fell 954,000 barrels a day to an average of 6.9m a day.

"This afternoon's sharp draw-down in crude inventories will be welcomed by oil bulls, with a reduction of 5.2m barrels confounding market expectations of a second consecutive weekly rise," said IG market analyst Joshua Mahony.

"Lower inventories do not always translate into lower production, yet a smaller amount of oil sloshing about is surely likely to improve the supply and demand dynamic, hence the out-performance of WTI over Brent," he added.

Comments by Saudi Arabian Energy Minister Khalid Al-Falih earlier on Wednesday that many nations were willing to join the OPEC output cut were taken with a pinch of salt, said Jasper Lawler, market analyst at CMC Markets.

On Comex, also at about 16:13 BST, gold was up 0.78% to $1272.8 an ounce, while silver rose 0.77% to $17.73 an ounce and copper firmed 0.07% to 210.7 cents a pound.

"The price of gold broke out to two week high on Wednesday on signs of caution before the third US presidential debate," observed Lawler in a statement.

"Gold bugs have defended $1250 per ounce with vigour since the price slumped at the start of the month. Traders are a superstitious bunch so the 29-year anniversary of Black Monday may have generated demand for safe havens like gold."

London Metals Exchange's three-month prices for copper, zinc and tin were up, but that for aluminium was lower.

Chicago Board of Trade-quoted corn rose 0.49% to 355.5 cents a bushel, while wheat was down 0.54% to 417.75 cents a bushel.

ICE-priced cocoa was up 0.78% to $2719 a MT and cotton No.2 was down 0.3% to 70.94 cents a pound. Live cattle was down 1.01% to 98.23 cents a pound.