Oil feels the heat of increase in US inventories

Oil is trading on the back foot in Asia on signs the excess supply issue is here to stay for a long time despite OPEC deal.

At the time of writing, WTI oil was down 0.13% at $52.18/barrel. Brent oil was down 0.22% at $55.08/barrel.

The weekly oil inventory report released by the EIA on Wednesday showed an unexpected buildup of 4.1 million barrels. However, the refineries increased the amount of crude they processed. The utilization rate jumped to highest since September.

This helped avoid sharp losses in oil benchmarks.