NEW YORK - Gas prices continued to slide Wednesday even as oil and gasoline futures jumped when the government reported a surprise decline in gasoline inventories.
At the pump, gas prices fell another 0.9 of a cent overnight to a national average of $3.031 a gallon, according to AAA and the Oil Price Information Service. Prices have fallen since the weekend after a brief rebound that was driven by Midwest refinery outages. Gas prices peaked at $3.227 a gallon in late May.
August gasoline rose 3.73 cents to 2.138 cents a gallon on the. The contract had lost nearly 27 cents over the last five sessions since last week’s petroleum inventory report from the Energy Department’s Energy Information Administration showed gas inventories and refinery utilization growing.
Light, sweet crude for August delivery gained 83 cents to $74.85 a barrel on the. Brent crude for September rose 77 cents to $76.30 on London’s ICE Futures exchange.
Also on the Nymex, August heating oil futures rose 2.73 cents to $2.0605 a gallon, and natural gas for August rose 6.9 cents to $6.376 per 1,000 cubic feet.
Wednesday’s EIA report from the showed that gasoline inventories dropped by 2.3 million barrels during the week ended July 13. Analysts surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires, on average, had expected an increase of 560,000 barrels.
Refinery utilization rates rose 0.8 percent to 91. Analysts had expected an 0.5 percent increase.
Crude oil inventories fell by 500,000 barrels, below analyst expectations for a 760,000-barrel decrease. Distillate stocks, which include heating oil and diesel fuel, fell by 200,000 barrels. Analysts had expected an increase of 780,000 barrels.
Gasoline imports plummeted by 508,000 barrels a day to an average of 915,000 barrels a day last week. Imports of crude oil grew by 350,000 barrels per day to an average of 10.4 million barrels a day.
Source : yahoo.news
