Crude-oil stockpiles fell last week, gasoline rose

Crude-oil inventories fell last week but gasoline stockpiles rose more than expected, according to government data released Wednesday.

For the week ended July 18 crude-oil inventories fell by 1.6 million barrels to 295.3 million barrels, the Energy Department's Energy Information Administration said in its weekly report.

Analysts had expected a draw of 1.9 million barrels, according to a survey by Platts, the energy research arm of McGraw-Hill Cos.

Gasoline inventories rose by 2.9 million barrels to 217.1 million barrels. Analysts expected stockpiles of the motor fuel to rise by only 500,000 barrels.

Demand for gasoline over the four weeks ended July 18 was 2.4 percent lower than a year earlier, averaging more than 9.3 million barrels a day.

At the same time, U.S. refineries ran at 87.1 percent of total capacity on average, a drop of 2.4 percentage points from the prior week. Analysts expected capacity to remain steady last week.

Inventories of distillate fuel, which include diesel and heating oil, rose by 2.4 million barrels to 128.1 million barrels for the week ended July 18. Analysts expected distillate stocks to rise by 2.2 million barrels.

At the pump, gas prices fell over a penny overnight to a national average of more than $4.04 a gallon, but are well above the year-ago average of about $2.96 a gallon, according to AAA and the Oil Price Information Service.

In morning trading, light, sweet crude for September delivery fell $2.47 to $125.95 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.