Oil futures fell Wednesday for a fourth straight session, marking their biggest losing streak in two months after the American Petroleum Institute reported a large increase in crude inventories. Crude for May delivery fell $1.12, or 2.3%, to $48.03 a barrel in electronic trading on Globex. Oil futures have lost nearly 9% since April 2. Late Tuesday, the API reported that U.S. crude inventories rose by 6.9 million barrels during the week ended April 3. The API also reported an increase of 2.8 million barrels in gasoline stocks as well as a decline of 2.2 million barrels in distillate stocks. The U.S. Energy Information Administration will release its closely watched data on petroleum supplies at 10:30 a.m. on Wednesday. Analysts surveyed by Platts expect that U.S. crude inventories rose 2.3 million barrels last week. If realized, it will be a fifth straight increase in inventories. Analysts also project a decline of 1.5 million barrels in gasoline stocks as well as a drop of 600,000 barrels for distillate inventories, which include heating oil and diesel, on the back of low refiner output, according to the Platts survey. "The continued inventory build-up in the U.S. has already caused the contango curve to steepen," said analysts at Commerzbank in a research note. Contango refers to the condition whereby prices for nearby delivery are lower than prices for future-month delivery. The price spread between the May and June crude contracts has already risen to about $3. "This makes crude oil less and less attractive for financial investors, and so we expect to see further outflows in the next few days that will continue to put downward pressure on the oil price and might trigger a decline in the direction of $45," the Commerzbank analysts said. Also on Globex Wednesday, May reformulated gasoline fell 3 cents to $1.43 a gallon and May heating oil dropped 2 cents to $1.37 a gallon. May natural gas futures gained 1 cent to $3.57 per million British thermal units.

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