Oil down after surging on crude inventories

Oil prices fell on Thursday in Asia after surging overnight amid a large fall in US crude inventories.

US Crude Oil WTI Futures were down 0.4% to $55.58 by 11:45 PM ET (03:45 GMT). International Brent Oil Futures traded 0.6% lower to $59.56.

Oil prices received support earlier in the day and gained more than 1% earlier in the day after data from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) showed inventories of US crude fell by 10.03 million barrels for the week ended Aug. 23, much more than expectations for a draw of 2.11 million barrels.

The large draw in crude supplies came as imports fell by about 1.51 million bpd, more than offsetting a 216,000 bpd build in exports, data from EIA showed.

The government data came after industry group American Petroleum Institute showed an even larger 11.1 million barrel plunge in U.S. crude stockpiles on Tuesday.

Ongoing trade conflict between the US and China were again cited as headwinds for the oil markets today. US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin declined to confirm whether a planned meeting with Chinese officials in September would still take place, although he noted that a meeting will happen sometime in the future.

Concerns about a weakening oil demand due to the intensifying Sino-US trade war have sent oil prices down about 15% since their April highs.