MW: Crude falls first day in six on U.S. inventories, China imports
By Moming Zhou, MarketWatch
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Crude-oil futures came under early selling pressure Wednesday, falling for the first session in six, as an industry group's data showed a surprise increase in U.S. crude inventories last week and as Chinese government data showed imports of crude dropped during June.
September futures, the new front-month contract, lost $1.23, or 1.9%, to $64.38 a barrel in North American trading. The August contract ended at $64.72 a barrel on Tuesday, the highest settlement level for a front-month contract since July 2.
U.S. crude stockpiles climbed 3.1 million barrels to stand at 349.9 million barrels in the week ended July 17, the American Petroleum Institute reported late Tuesday when oil futures' floor trading closed. It's the first increase reported by the API since April.
Analysts surveyed by energy-information provider Platts had expected a decline of 2 million barrels for crude stockpiles. They also had forecast increases of 800,000 barrels for gasoline and of 1.4 million barrels for distillates, which include heating oil and diesel.
Later Wednesday morning, the Energy Information Administration will release a more closely watched report on U.S. petroleum inventories.
Last week, the EIA reported a drop in crude inventories, but the increase in product stockpiles, such as gasoline and diesel, was bigger than the decline in crude, resulting in a fifth week in which total petroleum inventories were on the rise.
Total stockpiles stood at the highest level in the U.S. since September 1990, the EIA reported last week.
Meanwhile, China's crude imports last month fell to 16.61 million metric tons, or about 4.06 million barrels a day, down from 17.09 million tons in May, the country's customs data showed.
Total crude imports in the first half stood at 90.77 million metric tons, up 0.3% from a year ago, according to the data.
Also in energy trading, August reformulated gasoline fell 2.66 cents, or 1.5%, to $1.7854 a gallon and August heating oil lost 1.05 cents, or 0.6%, to $1.6879 a gallon.
August natural gas futures gave up 4.6 cents, or 1.3%, to $3.658 per million British thermal units.
