Inventory data weighs heavily on crude prices Crude prices have also been given some reprieve over the last few days, albeit to a lesser extent, with a large inventory build once again weighing on Wednesday. Safe to say, the 6.8 million barrel increase reported by EIA came as quite a surprise prompting a more than 4% drop in WTI over the following hour or so. This was almost double the build API reported a day earlier and far exceeded expectations. Both WTI and Brent did bounce back from the setback, aided by the stronger performance in the stock markets on the back of comments from various Fed officials including ... (full story)