By Claudia Assis
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Crude-oil futures briefly pared some of their losses Wednesday after a government report showed a larger-than-expected decrease in inventories, but then prices quickly fell back to about where they were before the data. Crude oil for August delivery lost 41 cents, or 0.5%, to $76.81 a barrel. The Energy Information Admnistration reported a decline of 5.1 million barrels in crude inventories in the week ended July 9, whereas analysts polled by Platts expected a drop of 2.6 million barrels. The EIA also reported an increase of 1.6 million barrels for gasoline stocks and a rise of 2.9 million barrels for stocks of distillates, which include heating oil and diesel. The analysts surveyed by Platts had projected increases of 950,000 barrels in gasoline supplies and 800,000 barrels in distillate supplies. Refineries operated at 90.5% of their operable capacity last week, the EIA said. Analysts had forecast a drop by 0.4 of a percentage point to 89.4%.
