By Cassie Werber
NEW YORK--U.S. oil futures traded near flat Wednesday after an
industry group reported an unexpected drop in domestic oil
supplies.
The American Petroleum Institute said late Tuesday that its data
showed that U.S. oil supplies fell by 6.5 million barrels in the
week ended Sept. 19.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration will release its data
for the same week at 10:30 a.m. EDT, and analysts surveyed by The
Wall Street Journal expect the agency to report a 500,000-barrel
increase in supplies.
Prices rose in late trading after the API data was released.
However, "the draw was primarily the result of a large decline
in crude-oil imports, which will likely be somewhat reversed in
next week's report," said Dominick Chirichella, analyst at the
Energy Management Institute in a note.
The API also said gasoline supplies rose by 91,000 barrels,
while distillate inventories rose by 3 million barrels. Analysts
surveyed by The Wall Street Journal called for a 200,000-barrel
drop in gasoline supplies and a 300,000-barrel gain in distillate
stocks.
Light, sweet oil for November delivery recently traded up 12
cents, or 0.1%, at $91.68 a barrel on the New York Mercantile
Exchange.
Meanwhile, Brent crude traded lower as renewed supplies from
Libya flowed into a market already loaded with oil. November Brent
crude on London's ICE Futures exchange recently fell 51 cents, or
0.5%, to $96.34 a barrel.
A price slide over the summer, which leveled off last week, is
back, with oil falling every day this week amid "signs of very
ample supply on the oil market in the near future," wrote analysts
at Commerzbank in a note.
Libya's Sharara oil field reopened Monday, allowing production
to rise back up to 800,000 barrels a day, while Iraqi oil exports
have continued to be strong and Nigeria's prospective exports are
also high.
"All of this, coupled with weak demand in Europe, is putting
pressure above all on Brent contracts with maturity dates in the
near future," Commerzbank said.
Front-month October reformulated gasoline blendstock, or RBOB,
recently fell 0.97 cent, or 0.4%, to $2.6190 a gallon. October
diesel fell 1.44 cents, or 0.5%, to $2.6688 a gallon.
Write to Nicole Friedman at nicole.friedman@wsj.com and Cassie
Werber at cassie.werber@wsj.com
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