Oil fell in New York on concern global demand will falter after South Korea unexpectedly cut interest rates, Australia’s jobless rate rose and economists said European manufacturing stagnated last month. Futures slid as much as 0.8 percent. Prices surged 2.3 percent yesterday after an Energy Department report showed a bigger-than-expected drop in U.S. crude stockpiles. Gasoline inventories rose almost six times as much as forecast and fuel use declined, the report also showed. Industrial output in the euro area was probably unchanged in May from April, according to a separate Bloomberg survey before data today from the European Union’s statistics office. “To move higher from here we would need to see two out of three big global economies -- Europe, the U.S. or China -- firmly back into growth territory,� said Michael McCarthy, a chief market strategist at CMC Markets in Sydney who predicts oil will trade between $81.50 and $88.50 a barrel. Crude for August delivery declined as much as 68 cents to $85.13 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. It was at $85.19 at 3:15 p.m. Singapore time. The contract yesterday climbed $1.90 to $85.81, the highest close since July 9. Prices have decreased 14 percent this year. Brent oil for August settlement on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange slid as much as 68 cents, or 0.7 percent, to $99.55 a barrel. The European benchmark contract was at a premium of $14.34 to New York-traded West Texas Intermediate grade. The spread was $14.42 yesterday, the widest in four weeks. Bollinger Band Oil in New York has technical support along the middle Bollinger Band on the daily chart, around $83.38 a barrel today, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Futures have halted declines near that indicator every day since July 6. Buy orders tend to be clustered close to chart-support levels. Industrial production in the euro area probably failed to increase in May after two months of decline, according to the median estimate of economists surveyed by Bloomberg. China may say tomorrow that its economy expanded 7.7 percent in the second quarter from a year earlier, the slowest pace in more than three years, a separate survey showed. Australian employers unexpectedly cut payrolls in June and the jobless rate rose for a second month, to 5.2 percent from 5.1 percent, data from the statistics bureau in Sydney showed today. South Korea reduced its benchmark seven-day repurchase rate by a quarter percentage point, highlighting concern that exports are threatened by Europe’s failure to end its debt crisis. Gasoline Supplies U.S. gasoline stockpiles rose 2.8 million barrels last week, compared with a median estimate of 500,000 in the Bloomberg survey of analysts. Inventories have increased the past four weeks, the longest stretch of gains this year, the Energy Department data showed. Distillate inventories, a category that includes heating oil and diesel, rose 3.1 million barrels compared with a projected 625,000-barrel gain. Crude supplies slid 4.7 million barrels. Total fuel use dropped 1.1 percent to 19 million barrels a day in the four weeks ended July 6, the biggest decline since February, the report showed. Global oil consumption will rise by an average 900,000 barrels a day this year, or about 1 percent, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries said yesterday in its monthly report. Growth will slow in 2013 to 800,000 barrels a day as the economy cools, according to the 12-member group’s first assessment for next year. Markets will be “comfortable� because of increased production by non-member producers, the report showed. OPEC, which accounts for about 40 percent of global supplies, will need to provide an average 29.6 million barrels a day in 2013, it said. That’s 300,000 barrels less than this year and about 1.8 million below current production rates. To contact the reporters on this story: Ben Sharples in Melbourne at bsharples@bloomberg.net; Yee Kai Pin in Singapore at kyee13@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Alexander Kwiatkowski in Singapore at akwiatkowsk2@bloomberg.net

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