Investing.com - Oil prices were mixed on Wednesday morning in Asia as U.S. crude inventories increased and markets prepared for oil production in the country to grow.
Crude Oil WTI Futures for November delivery fell 0.01% to $75.22 a barrel by 10:52PM ET (02:52 GMT) on the New York Mercantile Exchange, while London’s Intercontinental Exchange showed that Brent Oil Futures for December delivery edged up 0.02% to $84.82 per barrel.
The American Petroleum Institute (API) said on Tuesday that U.S. commercial crude inventories advanced by 907,000 barrels in the week to Sept. 28 to 400.9 million, while refinery crude tumbled by 158,000 barrels per day.
Government data from the Energy Information Administration is set to be released on Wednesday.
The rising inventories were attributed to the continuous growth of crude production in the U.S., which jumped by a third since mid-2016 to 11.1 million bpd.
“We expect U.S. crude production to exit the year at 11.3 million bpd,” Barclays (LON:BARC) bank said on Tuesday.
Elsewhere, Russia’s oil production was also reported to have surged to post-Soviet high in September. Russia produced a record 11.356 million bpd, according to data from the Energy Ministry’s CDU-TEK unit on Tuesday.
This move signified that Russia erased its 300,000 bpd cut agreed with the OPEC in 2016, and added over 100,000 bpd.
“No surprise about Russia’s growth in capabilities during the cutback, as investment continued apace, and so did upstream activity. This has created an ‘overhang’ that will further tapped in 2019,” said Matthew Sagers, managing director of Russian and Caspian energy research at HIS Inc.
Ahead of the U.S. crude sanctions against Iran, which will take effect next month, the oil exporter signed a deal with Syria on Tuesday about building a power plant in Syria’s coastal city of Latakia in a project worth $475 million. It is expected to launch in 2019.
The first gas unit at the Latakia power plant is expected to be completed in 15 months, while the second unit will take around two years to finish. The third unit at the plant will run on stream and is planned to be completed within 34 months, according to Iran media.