Oil prices up amid decreasing US crude stocks

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World oil prices are rising on Feb.23 amid the report about the decline in the volume of US crude stocks over the last week.

The price of April futures for Brent crude oil has increased by 1.06 percent to $56.43 per barrel as of 03:25 EST. The price of April futures for West Texas Intermediate (WTI) oil rose by 1.19 percent to $54.23 per barrel.

Crude inventories in the US dropped by 884,000 barrels over the week ending Feb. 17 and stood at 512.7 million barrels, the American Petroleum Institute (API) said in its report.

This is while analysts expected a rise of 3.5 million barrels in this volume.

Moreover, US crude oil imports fell last week by 1.5 million barrels per day to 7.398 million bpd, according to the API.

Official data from the US Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration (EIA) is yet to be released.