Crude Oil Closes at $60 as Inventories Decline

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rude oil prices declined slightly despite a drop in inventories, while distillate inventories, which include diesel, increased in the Department of Energy’s weekly report issued Wednesday.

Benchmark light sweet crude oil closed at $60.01 a barrel as the trading session ended Wednesday on the New York Mercantile Exchange, down 61 cents from Tuesday’s closing price, Bloomberg reported.

A factor in the price decline may have been the monthly forecast released Wednesday by the Paris-based International Energy Agency, which revised its global crude oil demand growth outlook downward by 200,000 barrels a day to 1.58 million for 2005, citing a weaker outlook for China and the United States, the Associated Press reported.

Crude oil stocks declined by 3.9 million barrels to 321 million barrels last week, DOE said. That exceeded analysts’ estimates of a 2.8 million barrel decline, Bloomberg said.

Meanwhile heating oil futures — a bellwether for distillate and diesel prices — fell Wednesday after DOE reported that distillate inventories rose 3.2 million barrels to 120.4 million barrels last week, exceeding analysts’ estimates of a 2 million barrel gain.

Gasoline inventories fell 2.6 million barrels to 212.6 million, DOE reported in its weekly summary.