NEW YORK (Dow Jones) – Crude futures rose Wednesday on a U.S. government report showing across-the-board declines in oil and fuel inventories.

Light, sweet crude for December delivery recently traded $1.29, or 1.6%, higher at $80.89 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Brent crude on the ICE futures exchange traded $1.14, or 1.5%, higher at $79.25 a barrel.

Oil inventories dropped by 3.9 million barrels last week, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said, after analysts had expected a 1.4-million-barrel rise. The drop was also accompanied by small declines in gasoline and distillate stocks, a category that includes heating oil and diesel.

Combined oil and fuel inventories have now declined for four consecutive weeks, adding some hard data to a rally built largely on investors’ hopes that a recovering U.S. economy would begin to draw down surplus supplies.

The EIA did report an increase in products supplied, a proxy for demand, to the highest level in two months. But the additional demand is being fed from stockpiles, as refiners continue to cut their intake of oil. Refinery utilization dropped 1.2 percentage points last week to 80.6% of capacity, the lowest operating rate since April. Oil imports were also at their lowest since August.

“We’re in a bull market even though … actual users of the stuff really don’t want it,” said Mike Zarembski, senior commodities analyst at optionsXpress in Chicago.

What’s not clear is whether the decline in oil shipments to the U.S. indicates that supplies are tightening worldwide, or if that crude is merely piling up in terminals overseas, or on tankers floating in the Gulf of Mexico.

Front-month December reformulated gasoline blendstock, or RBOB, recently traded 2.40 cents, or 1.2%, higher at $2.0244 a gallon. December heating oil traded 2.42 cents, or 1.2%, higher at $2.0975 a gallon.

The EIA reported a 300,000-barrel drop in gasoline inventories and a 400,000-barrel decline for distillate.

-By Brian Baskin, Dow Jones Newswires

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