Mixed Day on the Energy Front

Energy futures moved in a narrow range and finished mixed Thursday as a variety of both bullish and bearish influences kept traders from settling on a direction.

The July light sweet crude contract advanced 52 cents to $64.01 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Reformulated gasoline lost 2 cents, closing at $2.25 a gallon. Heating oil slid 3 cents to $1.85 a gallon.

The near-term natural gas contract remained unchanged at $7.94 per million British thermal units.

New inventory figures from the Energy Information Administration were prominently on traders' minds. Crude inventories fell by two million barrels for the week ended May 25, whereas analysts had been expecting a one-million-barrel build.

Distillate inventories grew by 147,000 barrels during the week, which was less than the 700,000 barrels that analysts were anticipating. Gasoline inventories were roughly in line with expectations, climbing by 1.4 million barrels.

Refinery utilization rates remained unchanged from the previous week at 91.1%.

After trading lower through most of the session, crude prices shot up into positive territory later in the day. "The upward move was a short-covering bounce," says Edward Meir, analyst at Man Financial. "The market was oversold going into today's session, and crude's failure to break down after the EIA released its inventory report prompted the short-covering."