Chuck Marvin
Crude futures were lower Wednesday as new petroleum inventory figures from the Department of Energy showed an unexpected build in oil supplies.
The October light sweet crude contract fell 36 cents to $69.21 a barrel at the New York Mercantile Exchange. Reformulated gasoline edged 2 cents higher to $1.89 a gallon, and heating oil was little changed at $1.95 a gallon. Natural gas dropped 24 cents to $5.58 per million British thermal units. The moves came after weekly inventory figures from the DOE's Energy Information Administration missed their forecasts by wide margins. Crude stores grew by 1.9 million barrels during the week ended Aug. 17. Analysts were expecting a 2.8 million-barrel draw from stores. Gasoline inventories fell by 5.7 million barrels, vs. the forecast 800,000-barrel drop. Distillate inventories received a 1.4 million-barrel injection, whereas analysts had predicted an 850,000 barrel increase. Refinery utilization fell from 91.8% to 91.6% during the week. Elsewhere, Hurricane Dean made landfall again in mainland Mexico. It remains a category 1 storm with sustained winds of 85 mph. Anticipating the hurricane, Mexican oil firm Pemex had shut in much of its production in the Gulf of Mexico. The effects of that response are now being tallied by energy analysts. "Dean is likely to result in significant lost Mexican oil production in the order of 10 million barrels," analysts at Barclays Capital wrote in a research note. Furthermore, Pemex's operations in the region will likely not be restarted until Friday.
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