• Global crude futures continued to head north Thursday with the main focus being the inversion of the front-month WTI/Brent futures spread. After almost five months of trading at a discount to ICE Brent, the NYMEX WTI futures contract rallied as the market priced in a continued decline in Cushing, Oklahoma, crude stocks, traders said. Prices have since stabilized and the western benchmark futures are trading near parity. "The market is definitely heading north," one London-based trader said. "The big draws in Cushing and refinery runs increasing has totally knocked out the big fund selling we've seen over the past few trading sessions," the trader added.

•On Wednesday, the Energy Information Administration reported a 1.1 million barrel drop in US commercial crude stocks and a 1.4 million barrel decline to 21.2 million barrels in inventories at Cushing, Oklahoma, home of the NYMEX delivery point. This was the ninth consecutive week that stocks at Cushing have fallen, alleviating what had been a backlog of barrels in the Midwest.

Updated: July 26, 2007