Energy Futures Fall on Rising Supply

Energy commodities finished mostly lower Wednesday, after the Energy Information Administration revealed large injections to crude oil and gasoline stores during the previous week that took many analysts and traders by surprise.

After falling to an intraday low of $67.40 a barrel, the July light sweet crude contract rebounded slightly and settled down 70 cents at $68.40 a barrel in late trading.

Reformulated gasoline slid a penny to $2.22 a gallon. Heating oil remained unchanged at $2.02 a gallon. July natural gas lost 16 cents to $7.36 per million British thermal units in late trading.

In its weekly report on petroleum inventories, the EIA said that 6.9 million barrels of oil were added to storage during the week ended June 15. Analysts had been expecting a 50,000-barrel draw from oil stores.

Motor gasoline inventories grew by 1.8 million barrels, vs. analyst predictions of a 1.2-million-barrel increase. Distillates increased by 157,000 barrels during the week, compared to analysts' expectation of 870,000 barrels.

The large crude oil injection suggests that U.S. refineries are well behind in their attempts to convert crude oil into summer-grade motor gasoline. Supporting this is the 87.6% refinery utilization rate revealed in today's EIA report, a decline of 1.6 percentage points from last week.

Refinery utilization is usually above 90% by the second week in June. The five-year average utilization rate for this time of year is 93.9%, according to EIA figures.