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Crude Oil Soars to 12-Year High After U.S. Inventories Decline

By Rajat Bhattacharya

Tokyo, Feb. 27 (Bloomberg) -- Crude oil rose as much as 2.5 percent to its highest price since Iraq occupied Kuwait in 1990, after the U.S. Energy Department said the nation's inventories last week fell to their third-lowest level in at least 19 years.

Prices have jumped as much as 7.2 percent in two days and 81 percent in a year. U.S. supplies are falling as it prepares for a possible attack against Iraq, saying the oil exporter still hasn't rid itself of weapons of mass destruction as it promised to do in the 1991 cease fire that ended the Persian Gulf War. A strike in Venezuela also cut oil supplies.

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