Crude oil prices remained steady today after the Energy Information Administration confirmed an API estimate of a crude oil inventory draw but a much smaller one than API’s 10.18 million barrels . The authority reported crude oil inventories in the United States had gone down by 1.2 million barrels in the week to December 7, the second weekly draw after a string of weekly increases, after a draw of 7.3 million barrels a week earlier. Oil prices have proved stubborn in the last couple of weeks, moving up and down by too little for the comfort of those who would like to see them higher in light of some strong tailwinds such as OPEC’s agreement to cut production and a major field outage in Libya. Yet it seems the relentless increase in U.S. production is countering these tailwinds. Daily output is likely to have continued rising last week, but […]