EIA: US crude stockpiles up 2.8 mb last week

Crude oil prices were lower Wednesday after the US Energy Information Administration said in its weekly US inventories report that crude oil, gasoline and distillates supplies were all higher last week.

Stockpiles of crude oil were up by 2.8 million barrels in the week ending 18 September, according to the EIA, against an expected decline of between 1.5 million barrels and 2.25 million barrels for the week, sending total inventories to 335.6 million barrels, over 45 million barrels higher than where stockpiles stood last year at the same time.

In addition, gasoline inventories grew by 5.4 million barrels last week and distillates in storage grew by 3 million barrels.

All these numbers implied that demand is not recovering as had been hoped.

November contracts for West Texas Intermediate crude had dropped $2.80 near the close of floor trade to $68.96 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange while at last report Brent crude was $2.60 lower to $67.93 on the ICE Futures Europe exchange in London.

Nymex October gasoline futures were down around 8 cents to $1.70 per gallon while November heating oil futures dropped 5 cents to $1.79 per gallon.

The price of retail gasoline in the US, meanwhile, was down 0.4 cent overnight to $2.54 per gallon on average nationally, lower than prices a month ago and a year ago.