NEW YORK, May 15 Reuters Crude prices edged up on Wednesday from a twomonth low in the prior session as the market balanced somewhat bullish U.S. economic and storage data against a forecast for weaker global oil demand growth from the International Energy Agency IEA.

Brent futures rose 33 cents, or 0.4, to 82.71 a barrel by 1210 p.m. EDT 1610 GMT, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate WTI crude rose 43 cents, or 0.6, to 78.45.

Earlier in the session, the bearish IEA report helped push both crude benchmarks into technically oversold territory with prices at their lowest levels since February.

That futures price drop came before some bullish U.S. news on a biggerthanexpected weekly crude storage withdrawal and inflation data supporting analysts39; expectations that the U.S. Federal Reserve will cut interest rates later this year.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration EIA said energy firms pulled a morethanexpected 2.5 million barrels of crude from stockpiles during the week ended May 10.

That compares with the 0.5million barrel withdrawal analysts forecast in a Reuters poll, and the 3.1million barrel decline shown in data from the American Petroleum Institute API, an industry group. ,

The crude oil draw is mostly from the increase in the refinery utilization rate … Refiners finally got serious about that, finally cranked it up a bit, Bob Yawger, director of energy futures at Mizuho told Reuters.

U.S. consumer prices increased less than expected in April,…