Filed under: Commodities, Oil

Oil is treading water at a near-record $125 per barrel after a U.S. Energy Information Administration report indicated that weekly crude oil inventories rose a considerably smaller-than-expected 200,000 barrels. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg News had expected crude oil inventories to increase by 2.25 million barrels last week.

Gasoline supplies fell 1.7 million barrels.

The modest increase in oil inventories had little affect on oil prices, for the moment. Oil was down 87 cents to $124.93 per barrel in Wednesday morning trading. The other major energy commodities were also virtually unchanged. Unleaded gasoline fell 1 cent to $3.18 per gallon. Heating fell about 2 cents to $3.66 per gallon. Natural gas gained 10 cents to $11.52 per million BTUs.

Meanwhile, refineries operated at 86.6% of capacity for the week ended May 9, 2008, the EIA report indicated, up from 85.0% in the week ended May 2, 2008.

A bright spot: Refinery utilization

Independent energy trader Jim Dietz told BloggingStocks Wednesday the increase in refinery utilization was the report’s lone bright spot.

Continue reading Oil stable near $125 after small weekly inventory build

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 14th, 2008 at 9:18 pm and is filed under Stocks Money News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.