A brief opening rally by oil and oil-service stocks quickly unraveled Wednesday, tugged lower by more losses in the broader equities market and feint support from commodities.
Investors initially swooped into the sector to pick up a few bargains in the wake of Tuesday's steep declines. But momentum quickly swung to the negative, sending the Amex Oil Index 0.7% lower to 870.1 points. The index dropped 6.4% on Tuesday.
Crude-oil prices were offering little support. The March futures contract was up 24 cents to $35.17 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, but that did little to blunt the impact of the previous session's steep 7% decline. See Futures Movers.
Exxon Mobil was among the few gainers, up 91 cents, or 1.2%, at $72.20 a share. No. 2 Chevron Corp. was ahead 15 cents, or 0.2%, at $66.33.
Valero Energy Corp. , the nation's biggest independent refiner, was lagging the group, down 2.8% at $21.48 a share. The company is reportedly struggling with an unscheduled outage at the coker unit at its Delaware City refinery. But, like all refiners, Valero is also struggling with declining energy demand and swelling inventories as the economy grinds ever slower.
The Philadelphia Oil Services Index was also slightly lower, down 0.2% at 119.2 points, with eight of its 15 components declining.
The Amex Natural Gas Index was the sector laggard, down 2.6% at 351.6 points. Ultra Petroleum Corp. was leading percentage decliners in the group, down 9.4% at $33.55 a share.
Chesapeake Energy , the nation's biggest natural gas producer, was off 5.2% at $16.23 a share. The company reported after Tuesday's closing bell a fourth-quarter loss of $866 million, or $1.51 a share. Adjusted earnings showed per-share earnings of 73 cents, 2 cents shy of the 75 cents Wall Street had been looking for.
