Light, sweet crude for June delivery settled up $1.57, or 3.5%, at $46.23 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, the highest mark since Nov. 4. Brent, the global benchmark, rose $2.08, or 4.6%, to $47.60 a barrel on ICE Futures Europe. Both benchmarks had been down ahead of the weekly inventory report.

U.S. crude-oil stockpiles dropped by 3.4 million barrels in the week ended May 6, the Energy Information Administration said Wednesday. Analysts surveyed by The Wall Street Journal had expected a 400,000-barrel increase.

U.S. stockpiles of crude oil still stand near the highest level in more than 80 years, evidence of the global glut of crude oil that has weighed on prices since mid-2014. But “the market sentiment has definitely shifted” away from worries about the current oversupply, said Kyle Cooper, analyst at IAF Advisors in Houston. “We’ll see if the momentum can continue upward.”

The U.S. oil benchmark has surged 76% since hitting a 13-year low earlier in the year, buoyed by falling U.S. output and production outages in some parts of the world. But ample inventories have capped price gains, with some investors saying they don’t think the current rally can last before global stockpiles of crude oil decline.

Crude inventories fell even though imports and production levels remained relatively steady and refineries processed less crude oil compared with the prior week, the EIA said. This type of data mismatch is common and is typically smoothed out in the EIA’s monthly data sets, which are considered more reliable.

Crude stockpiles typically fall at this time of year as refineries complete seasonal maintenance and process more crude oil into refined products like gasoline.

Analysts expect to see a drop in imports in the coming week due to wildfires in Canada that prompted some companies to halt oil-sands production. “We should see pipeline flows drop in the coming two weeks,” said Matt Smith, director of commodity research at shipping tracker ClipperData.

In another boost to prices, the EIA estimated that U.S. crude production fell slightly last week to 8.8 million barrels a day, the lowest level since September 2014.

Supplies of gasoline and distillates, including diesel fuel and heating oil, also fell.

Ongoing outages in Nigeria, Canada and elsewhere also supported prices.

Shell Petroleum Development Co. of Nigeria this week shut off exports from a major pipeline due to a leak. This is in addition to an offshore production platform and an export terminal in Nigeria that have also been shut this year. Nigeria produced about 1.7 million barrels a day of crude oil in March, the lowest level since 2009, according to the International Energy Agency.

People in cars and trucks flee flames south of Fort McMurray in Canada last Friday. Companies are preparing to restart oil production in the region in coming days.
People in cars and trucks flee flames south of Fort McMurray in Canada last Friday. Companies are preparing to restart oil production in the region in coming days. PHOTO: ASSOCIATED PRESS
In Canada, companies are preparing to restart oil production. More than a million barrels a day have been offline due to the fires in the oil-rich province of Alberta, which has supported prices in recent days.

Traders are also concerned about hampered production in Libya due to political unrest. The country’s oil production fell by 140,000 barrels a day to 220,000 barrels a day following the blockage of a port last week, said a spokesman for the internationally recognized National Oil Co. in Tripoli.

Analysts say that these disruptions are likely to be short lived and the market remains oversupplied, underpinned by ballooning output by major producers such as Saudi Arabia and Iran, which are locked in a heated battle for market share.

Gasoline futures rose 9.58 cents, or 6.4%, to $1.5815 a gallon. Diesel futures rose 5.92 cents, or 4.4%, to $1.3967 a gallon.

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