Oil Falls to Seven-Week Low $101.47 as Output, Supplies Surge
Oil fell more than $2.50 Wednesday to finish the trading day at a seven-week low $101.47 a barrel, following a report that crude inventories took their biggest jump in four years, Bloomberg reported.
Crude futures fell $2.54 to finish the New York Mercantile Exchange trading day at $101.47 a barrel, the lowest settlement price since Valentine’s Day.
That followed a $1.22 decline on Tuesday, to $104.01, Bloomberg said.
Oil inventories jumped by 9 million barrels last week — the biggest increase since 2008 — to 362.4 million barrels, the highest since June, the Department of Energy said Wednesday.
The increase topped analysts’ forecasts of a 2.5-million barrel gain, Bloomberg reported.
Crude output rose 2.9% to 6.1 million barrels per day, the most since 1999, Bloomberg said, citing DOE figures.
Distillate stockpiles, which include diesel, rose by 19,000 barrels for the week ended Friday, while gasoline supplies slipped by 1.5 million barrels, DOE said in its weekly inventory report.
