Crude Oil Price Closing Report | Oil prices fall nearly 2%, retreating from five-month highs
Tom DiChristopher 4 minutes Sergei Karpukhin | Reuters Oil prices fell on Thursday, after rising to five-month highs earlier this week on OPEC-led production cuts and free-falling Venezuelan output. International benchmark Brent futures were down $1, or 1.4%, at $70.73 a barrel around 1:30 p.m. ET (1930 GMT). Brent hit a more than five-month high at $71.78 on Wednesday. U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude oil futures fell $1.11, or 1.7%, to $63.50 per barrel. WTI whit a high of $64.79 going back to Nov. 1 earlier this week. Selling accelerated Thursday morning as U.S. crude dropped below $63.71 a barrel, a technically-significant level at which some funds had stops in place, triggering automatic sales, said Bob Yawger, director of energy futures at Mizuho in New York. U.S. crude inventories surged by 7 million barrels to a 17-month high of 456.6 million barrels last week, the Energy Information Administration said on Wedne