The American Petroleum Institute (API) reported a draw of 1.562 million barrels in United States crude oil inventories, against an S&P Platts’ survey of analysts that expected inventories would draw down by 2.7 million barrels for the week ending November 3—continuing the drawdown that the market has seen in recent weeks. Gasoline inventories, according to the API, saw a small build of 520,000 barrels for the week ending November 3, against an expectation of a draw of 2.25 million barrels. Both WTI and Brent benchmarks were down earlier on Tuesday, but still near two-year highs as the market shows increasing faith that OPEC will be able to rebalance the oil market by extending the current production cut deal until the end of 2018. Disruptions in Iraq and Libya, as well as surprise arrests in Saudi Arabia—including of an Aramco board member—also lent a helping hand to support prices. Crude […]