Oil Falls Following Supply Surge
Crude oil fell more than $1 a barrel Wednesday following a Department of Energy report that showed inventories of oil, gasoline and distillates all improved last week, Bloomberg reported.
Oil futures fell 1.27 to close at $87.14 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, the lowest closing price since Jan. 23, Bloomberg said.
Stockpiles rose 7.1 million barrels to 300 million barrels for the week ended Saturday, in the biggest weekly gain since March 2004, DOE said in its weekly inventory report.
That was well above the 2.6 million-barrel increase expected by analysts, Bloomberg said.
Gasoline inventories rose 3.6 million barrels, more than the 1.9 million-barrel gain that was forecast.
Distillate stockpiles, which include diesel, rose 135,000 barrels, in contrast to the 2.1 million-barrel decline that analysts had forecast, Bloomberg said.
