Crude oil breaks $133 level

The price of crude oil rose above $133 per barrel at the close of floor trade in New York on Wednesday and continued the climb in after hours trade, at times approaching $134 per barrel not long after the close.

2016 contracts were even higher, trading above $142 per barrel during the day.

The gains came on an unexpected decline in crude oil inventories and distillates inventories that were up less than had been expected.

The US Energy Information Administration said, in its weekly US inventories report, that crude oil stockpiles dropped 5.4 million barrels in the week ending 16 May, to 320.4 million barrels when a gain had been expected.

Gasoline inventories were also lower, falling by 800,000 barrels to 209.4 million barrels, while distillates in storage gained only 700,000 barrels to 107.8 million barrels total.

US Energy Secretary Sam Bodman blamed the higher prices on rising demand in the face of production that only remained steady, while saying that speculators are not responsible for the high prices.

Secretary Bodman said that there is nothing the government can do about the gains in prices and that in his opinion, there is nothing that can be done about them.

Despite this, US demand was down slightly over the past four weeks and has been for the most part since the beginning of the year.

July contracts for West Texas Intermediate crude closed at $133.17 per barrel, adding more than $4 on the session on the New York Mercantile Exchange, while Brent crude jumped $4.34 to $132.18 per barrel on the ICE Futures Europe exchange in London.

At-the-pump prices for gasoline and diesel hit new highs again in the US as well, with the price of unleaded regular up 0.7 cent to $3.807 per gallon as diesel fuel gained 1.9 cents to $4.558 per gallon on average nationally.