Crude oil prices were falling while refined product contracts clawed back earlier losses that followed a surprisingly bearish inventory and demand report Wednesday morning.
The August contract for West Texas Intermediate crude was 18cts lower to $80.65/bbl at about 11:50 a.m. ET after rising as high as $81.63/bbl earlier in the day. September WTI was 10cts lower to $79.97/bbl.
Brent crude losses were lighter, with the August contract down 6cts to $84.95/bbl while the more-active September contract was off 4cts to $84.18/bbl.
Refined product contracts were trading about 2cts/gal off earlier lows, with the lightly traded July ULSD contract ahead 1.66cts to $2.5260/gal while August prices were 1.67cts higher to $2.5431/gal.
July RBOB futures were seeing gains of 0.99ct to $2.5246/gal and August prices added 1.14cts to $2.5092/gal.
Contracts had shown gains through much of the morning, but prices came under pressure following the release of the Energy Information Administration's latest Weekly Petroleum Status Report, which showed a build of 3.6 million bbl in U.S. crude inventories and an increase of 2.7 million bbl for gasoline supplies.
Distillate inventories fell by about 400,000 bbl.
Energy prices have been supported in recent weeks by solid implied demand readings from EIA, so markets reacted unfavorably when the agency reported implied U.S. gasoline demand of 8.96 million b/d, a decrease of nearly 400,000 b/d from the previous week and about 240,000 b/d lower than the same week last year.
Distillate demand fell by more than 400,000 b/d during the week but did top last-year levels by about 200,000 b/d.
The increase in gasoline supplies came even as U.S. refinery operations eased slightly during the week, with U.S. utilization at 92.2%, a decrease of 1.3 percentage points from the previous week.
The increase in gasoline and diesel futures prices was being reflected in spot market prices around the country, with most showing similar increases in fuel prices. Two exceptions were San Francisco and the Pacific Northwest, where CARBOB prices were moving lower by 1.7cts/gal and 1.2cts/gal, respectively.
This content was created by Oil Price Information Service, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. OPIS is run independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.
--Reporting by Steve Cronin, scronin@opisnet.com; Editing by Michael Kelly, mkelly@opisnet.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
06-26-24 1245ET
