Crude oil prices up despite inventories gains

Crude oil prices were higher on Wednesday despite US inventories figures that showed oil, gasoline, and distillate stockpiles were all higher during the week ending June 1. July contracts for Brent crude were 68 cents higher to $71.13 per barrel on the Intercontinental Exchange. West Texas Intermediate crude for July delivery gained 50 cents to $66.11 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Crude oil stockpiles added 100,000 barrels last week to 342.3 million barrels. Gasoline inventories, meanwhile, were up by 3.5 million barrels to 201.5 million barrels, much more of an increase than the 1.4 million barrels that had been expected. Distillates gained 1.9 million barrels to 122.3 million barrels in storage.

Refinery utilization dropped to 89.6 percent, the lowest early June utilization in fifteen years and a surprise decline from the previous week’s 91.1 percent. In addition, demand for gasoline continued to rise. Demand in the past four weeks was up by 1.5 percent to 9.45 million barrels per day. Still, Nymex July gasoline dropped 2.7 cents to $2.18 per gallon on the session.

Crude oil prices were initially lower after the announcement of the new inventories numbers, but rose again after a cyclone disrupted supplies from Oman for the second day in a row. There were concerns that the storm will interrupt shipping in the Persian Gulf despite the insistence of Iranian oil officials that shipments will not be affected by the storm, which had weakened to the equivalent of a Category One hurricane.