NEW YORK - The price of oil climbed to near US$89 per bar­rel Wednes­day af­ter the gov­ern­ment said sup­plies have dropped more than an­a­lysts ex­pect­ed. Bench­mark US crude rose by 85 cents to end the day at US$88.91 per bar­rel in New York. Brent crude, which sets the price for im­port­ed oil, added US$1.04 to fin­ish at US$105.96 per bar­rel in Lon­don.

Prices rose af­ter the En­er­gy In­for­ma­tion Ad­min­is­tra­tion said US oil stock­piles fell by a sur­pris­ing 6.5 mil­lion bar­rels last week - four times what an­a­lysts fore­cast. The de­cline was main­ly due to a drop in crude im­ports, not to a pick-up in de­mand for oil. Gaso­line sup­plies al­so dropped un­ex­pect­ed­ly last week, ac­cord­ing to the EIA. The eco­nom­ic news was mixed on Wednes­day.

The Com­merce De­part­ment said that con­struc­tion spend­ing rose in June. But US man­u­fac­tur­ing ac­tiv­i­ty fell in Ju­ly and sur­veys showed that man­u­fac­tur­ing ac­tiv­i­ty bare­ly grew in Chi­na.

AP