Oil futures rose Thursday after the government reported larger-than-expected declines in crude and heating oil inventories.

Light, sweet crude for February delivery rose $1 to $96.97 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Earlier, oil prices rose after the assassination of Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto raised concerns about stability in the Middle East.

Other energy futures were mixed Thursday. January gasoline rose 2.01 cents to $2.4727 a gallon on the Nymex, and January heating oil rose 2.44 cents to $2.6656 a gallon.

December natural gas fell 13.6 cents to $7.91 per 1,000 cubic feet on the Nymex after the government, in a separate report, said natural gas inventories fell last week by 121 billion cubic feet, in line with expectations.

In London, December Brent crude rose 64 cents to $94.58 a barrel on the ICE Futures exchange.

In its weekly inventory report, the Energy Department’s Energy Information Administration said oil inventories fell by 3.3 million barrels last week, more than double the 1.3 million barrel decline analysts surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires had expected on average.

Crude supplies at the closely-watched Nymex delivery terminal in Cushing, Okla., rose by 100,000 barrels last week. Falling supplies there are seen as a symptom of a tight market, and those concerns ease when Cushing inventories rise, as they have for several weeks.

Refinery activity rose by 0.3 percentage point last week to 88.1 percent of capacity. Analysts had expected an increase of 0.6 percentage point.

Supplies of gasoline rose last week by 700,000 barrels, about half the 1.4 million barrel increase analysts had expected.

And inventories of distillates, which include heating oil and diesel fuel, fell by 2.8 million barrels, much more than the expected 800,000 barrel decline.

Crude imports rose last week by an average of 694,000 barrels a day to 9.8 million barrels a day. Gasoline imports dipped last week by 93,000 barrels a day to an average of 1 million barrels a day.

Gasoline demand rose last week by 159,000 barrels, and was up 0.3 percent over the last four weeks compared to the same period last year, the EIA said.