United States crude oil stocks fell last week as refineries continued to run down inventories during a seasonally slower period, while distillate inventories fell and imports dropped, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said.

Crude inventories fell 5.2 million barrels in the week to October 14, compared with analysts’ expectations for an increase of 2.7 million barrels.

Oil prices rose on the news, with U.S. crude hitting a high not seen since July of last year. West Texas Intermediate crude extended gains to $51.65 a barrel, up 2.7 percent, while Brent crude gained 2.2 percent to $52.79 a barrel.

“The report was bullish, due to the large drop in crude oil inventories, caused by a significant drop in imports that came in below 7 million barrels per day,” said John Kilduff, partner at New York energy hedge fund Again Capital.

U.S. crude imports fell last week by 912,000 barrels per day. Overall, weekly imports of crude fell to 6.47 million bpd, the lowest since November 2015. Kilduff noted that refining demand has been reduced, explaining some of the decline in imports.

Refinery crude runs fell by 182,000 bpd, EIA data showed. Refinery utilization rates fell by 0.5 percentage point, hitting a low not seen since April 2013. Crude stocks at the Cushing, Oklahoma, delivery hub fell by their most since April, dropping by 1.6 million barrels, EIA said.

Analysts attributed this in part to an outage on Plains All American’s Basin pipeline last week. The company advised customers on Thursday that it had delayed a planned restart, which affected supply coming from Colorado City, Texas, into the Oklahoma hub.
Overnight interbank rate falls to 20% after FX auction disappoints

Oct 19 Nigeria’s overnight interbank rate crashed on Wednesday to around 20 percent from 150 percent after the central bank sold less hard currency than expected at a special auction, traders said.

“The central bank has released the result of the auction, but the amount sold fell short of market expectations,” one dealer said, without giving details.

The interbank rate fell after the auction as banks had now more surplus liquidity from funds not used to buy hard currency, dealers said. Banks had been required to fund their accounts to participate in the auction, causing the cost of borrowing to soar.