Crude oil prices edged high­er yes­ter­day af­ter the US gov­ern­ment re­port­ed that crude oil stor­age hit an­oth­er record high last week. How­ev­er, the amount of stor­age was less than what some traders had ex­pect­ed. US gov­ern­ment da­ta showed crude stock­piles rose 3.5 mil­lion bar­rels last week to reach an all-time peak above 507 mil­lion bar­rels.

Some traders bet prices will head back low­er af­ter Sau­di Oil Min­is­ter Ali al-Nai­mi, on Tues­day, ruled out pro­duc­tion cuts. Al-Nai­mi told a meet­ing of en­er­gy lead­ers in Hous­ton that pro­duc­tion cuts aimed at sup­port­ing falling crude prices won't work.

He said the mar­ket should in­stead let some op­er­a­tors go out of busi­ness. Fol­low­ing his re­marks, crude oil tum­bled more than four per cent on Tues­day and was low­er in ear­ly trad­ing yes­ter­day.

Word is that more ma­jor pro­duc­ers are like­ly to join a Sau­di-Rus­sia deal to freeze out­put at Jan­u­ary's highs. Iran, which op­pos­es any move to lim­it its oil out­put un­til its crude ex­ports reach pre-sanc­tion lev­els, called the deal "laugh­able."

West Texas In­ter­me­di­ate crude rose 26 cents to US$32.13 a bar­rel in New York, but is still well be­low the US$45 a bar­rel price on which T&T's bud­get is pegged. Brent crude, which is used to price oils in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, gained US$1.14, or 3.4 per cent, to US$34.41 a bar­rel.