Price of Crude Oil Falls; Distillate Inventories Gain

August 17, 2005 3:00 PM, EDT

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rude oil prices fell almost $3 a barrel, the biggest decline since April, following a Department of Energy report Wednesday showing that distillate fuel inventories, which include diesel, rose last week.

Crude oil for September delivery fell $2.83, or 4.3%, to close at $63.25 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange on Wednesday, Bloomberg reported.

DOE’s weekly inventory report showed that distillate inventories jumped 1.19 million barrels last week, to 131.1 million barrels.

Inventories of gasoline dropped 4.97 million barrels to 198.1 million barrels, the seventh straight decline. A drop of 1.5 million barrels was expected, Bloomberg reported.

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