may 18 reuters  oil prices edged lower on thursday easing on concerns over plentiful supply after surging nearly 3 during the previous session brent crude futures dipped 24 cents to 7672 a barrel us west texas intermediate crude dropped 21 cents to 7262 both benchmarks rose nearly 3 on wednesday on optimism over oil demand and us debt ceiling negotiations weighing on prices us oil inventories jumped unexpectedly last week due to another release from the strategic petroleum reserve crude inventories usoilceci rose by 5 million barrels in the week to may 12 to 4676 million barrels compared with analysts expectations in a reuters poll for a 900000barrel drop still us gasoline inventories dropped as demand surged to its highest since 2021 investors are watching developments around us debt ceiling negotiations meanwhile president joe biden and top us congressional republican kevin mccarthy on wednesday underscored their determination to reach a deal soon to raise the federal governments 314 trillion debt ceiling and avoid an economically catastrophic default after a monthslong standoff the democratic president and speaker of the house of representatives on tuesday agreed to negotiate directly an agreement needs to be reached and passed by both chambers of congress before the federal government runs out of money to pay its bills as soon as june 1