Crude oil pares earlier gains on US stock builds

08 February 2012 16:05  [Source: ICIS news]

LONDON (ICIS)--Crude oil lost around 80 cents/bbl on Wednesday, eroding earlier gains, when this week’s US stock figures showed a small build on crude stocks.

Although this was still smaller than forecast, distillate stocks showed a build rather than the forecast draw while the build on gasoline was larger than expected.

March NYMEX light sweet crude futures fell from around $99.75/bbl before the figures from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) were published to around $98.95/bbl, a gain of 54 cents/bbl from Tuesday’s close

However, it then regained a little ground and at 15:40 GMT, March NYMEX crude was trading around $99.00/bbl, up 59 cents/bbl from Tuesday’s close of $98.41/bbl.

On ICE Futures, March Brent also lost ground, falling from around $116.85/bbl before the figures were published to around $116.50/bbl. At 15:40 GMT, March Brent was trading around $116.65/bbl, up 42 cents/bbl from Tuesday’s close of $116.23/bbl.

Analysts’ predictions for this week’s US stock figures were that they would show a build on crude stocks of about 2.4m bbl, a draw on distillate of around 700,000 bbl and a build on gasoline of around 700,000 bbl.

The American Petroleum Institute (API) figures were published late on Tuesday.

U.S Stocks (million bbl)	w/e 03.02.12
	EIA	Change	API	Change
Crude	339.2	+0.3	334.9	-4.5
Gasoline	231.8	+1.6	228.9	+4.4
Distillate	146.6	+1.2	144.2	+0.4
Heating Oil	31.4	+0.6	31.9	+0.1
Jet Kerosene	41.9	-0.3	41.9	-0.5

By: Tony Dillon
+44 20 8652 3214

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