Oil prices grow after release of US statistics

World oil prices continued to rise on Thursday morning after the publication of statistics on US crude reserves that experienced decline.

Report informs, referring to the auction data, that the price of February futures for Brent crude rose by 0.46% to $82.58 per barrel, and February futures for WTI grew by 0.56% to $78.73.

The statistics of commercial oil reserves in the US was released on Wednesday. Thus, inventories (excluding the strategic reserve) for the week ended December 16 fell by 5.9 million barrels, or 1.4% - to 418.2 million barrels, although analysts had expected a decrease in inventories by only 1.7 million barrels. At the same time, the strategic oil reserves of the United states fell to a minimum since December 1983, amounting to 378.6 million barrels.