Crude Oil Price Falls Following DOE Inventory Report

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rude oil prices continued to fall Thursday as oil and gasoline inventories last week dropped less than analysts had expected, Bloomberg reported.

Crude oil inventories fell 6.4 million barrels for the week ended Saturday, and gasoline stocks dropped by 4.3 million, the Department of Energy said in its weekly report issued Thursday.

Those figures were less of a drop than analysts had predicted, Bloomberg reported.

Distillate inventories, which fell by 800,000 barrels, also were less than forecast. Diesel is a distillate fuel, as are heating oil and jet fuel.

Benchmark light sweet crude oil futures fell to less than $64 on the New York Mercantile Exchange in intraday trading Thursday, more than $6 below the $70.85 record set Aug. 29 as Hurricane Katrina approached the Gulf Coast.

Gasoline futures prices on the Nymex also fell sharply immediately following the inventory report, though they rebounded slightly following that, Bloomberg reported.

Some traders questioned the figures as potentially unreliable in the wake of the storm, which threw much of the nation’s energy infrastructure into chaos, CNBC reported.