Distillate Inventories Gain For 10th Straight Week

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eating oil futures, a proxy for diesel prices, fell Wednesday following the 10th straight report of growth in distillate inventories, Bloomberg reported.

Wednesday’s weekly inventory report by the Department of Energy showed that distillate stocks, which include both diesel and heating oil, rose by 3.14 barrels. That was greater than analysts’ estimates of a 2 million barrel gain, Bloomberg said.

Heating-oil futures fell 1.07 cents, or 0.7%, to $1.593 a gallon in early trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange following DOE's report, Bloomberg said.

Crude oil and gasoline inventories both fell last week, with oil supplies dropping 2.25 million barrels and gasoline falling 2.13 million barrels, DOE reported.

Analysts had predicted a crude oil drop of about 700,000 barrels, Bloomberg said.

Benchmark crude oil futures fell 9 cents to close at $59.11 Wednesday on the Nymex, news services reported.