Crude Oil Is Getting Hammered

West Texas Intermediate crude oil is falling again.

On Wednesday morning, the price of WTI was back below $45 a barrel, down about 3% to as low as $44.92 as oil still can't find a bottom and continues to swing wildly up and down.

Wednesday also saw the release of the latest crude inventory report from the EIA, which showed that US crude oil inventories rose by 8.9 million over the previous week. In its report, the EIA said, "At 406.7 million barrels, U.S. crude oil inventories are at the highest level for this time of year in at least the last 80 years."

And on Twitter following this report, Bespoke Investment Group noted that this is the biggest three-week rise in crude inventories since 1989. Over the weekend, we highlighted this chart from Bespoke's George Pearkes showing that crude inventories in the US are basically off the chart right now.

Inventory data from the EIA follows news on Tuesday out of the American Petroleum Institute, which reported that crude inventories surged by almost 13 million barrels last week.

Here's the chart. We'll keep an eye out.