Oil Price Falls Following Report on Higher Inventories
Oil prices fell to near $104 a barrel Wednesday following a Department of Energy report showed that crude stockpiles jumped almost 3 million barrels last week, Bloomberg reported.
Crude futures fell almost $1 to $104.16 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange following DOE’s report that showed inventories rose 2.9 million barrels for the week ended Saturday, Bloomberg said.
DOE also said that distillate inventories, which include diesel, rose by 700,000 barrels last week, while gasoline stockpiles fell by 2.7 million barrels.
Analysts had forecast a 1.5 million barrel gain in crude inventories last week and a 2 million barrel decline in gasoline supplies, which fell to their lowest level since December, Bloomberg reported.
Oil futures closed at their highest price since September 2008 last Wednesday, finishing at $105.75 per barrel. Crude closed near just under $104 a barrel on Monday and at $104.79 on Tuesday.
The price in the past week has risen in part due to fighting in Libya, an oil-producing member of OPEC, Bloomberg reported.
Prices have risen 23% since anti-government protests began Feb. 15 in that country, cutting output in Africa’s third-largest producer by two-thirds, Bloomberg said.
