West Texas Intermediate fell after its biggest advance in two weeks, with prices failing to breach a technical indicator amid a decline in U.S. stockpiles. Futures dropped as much as 0.5 percent in New York after rising 0.9 percent yesterday. Crude is declining as prices couldn’t surmount technical resistance along the middle Bollinger Band, near $94.10 a barrel, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. U.S. oil inventories fell by 1.3 million barrels last week, the first drop in two months, an Energy Department report showed. Supplies were forecast to climb 2 million barrels in a Bloomberg News survey. “WTI is trading in a narrow range, but I think the upside is limited,� said Ken Hasegawa, an energy trading manager at Newedge Group in Tokyo. West Texas oil has traded between about $94 a barrel and near to $90 for the past 30 days. WTI for May delivery fell as much as 43 cents to $93.07 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. It was at $93.13 at 3:42 p.m. Singapore time. The volume of all futures traded was 58 percent below the 100-day average. The April contract, which expired yesterday, closed 80 cents higher at $92.96. Brent for May settlement on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange slid 15 cents to $108.57 a barrel. The volume of all futures traded was 78 percent below the 100-day average. The European benchmark grade was at a premium of $15.44 to WTI. The gap was $14.93 on March 19, the narrowest since July. Bollinger Indicator Front-month WTI futures have traded near the middle Bollinger indicator for the past four days without settling above it, according to Bloomberg data. Sell orders tend to be clustered close to chart-resistance levels. Crude stockpiles at Cushing, Oklahoma, the biggest U.S. storage hub and the delivery point for WTI contracts, shrank by 286,000 barrels last week to 49 million, according to the Energy Department report. It was a second weekly decrease and the lowest level since the week ended Dec. 14. Total oil inventories were 383 million, 12 percent higher than the five-year average. The data for total supplies may have been distorted by the West Coast, which registered the largest decline at 2.75 million barrels. The inventory change in the area is sometimes disregarded by traders because the region’s distribution system is isolated from the rest of the U.S., Tariq Zahir, a New York- based commodity fund manager at Tyche Capital Advisors, said yesterday. Excluding the West Coast, total U.S. stockpiles rose by 1.44 million barrels. Gasoline Inventories U.S. gasoline inventories slid by 1.5 million barrels last week, the government report showed. They were forecast to fall by 2 million, according to the median estimate of 11 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. Distillate-fuel supplies, including heating oil and diesel, decreased by 672,000 barrels, compared with a projected fall of 1 million in the survey. Tensions over Iran’s nuclear ambitions appear to be easing. Talks last month over the uranium-enrichment program that led to sanctions on the country’s oil exports marked a “turning point,� said Mohammad Khazaee, the Islamic Republic’s ambassador to the United Nations. World powers meeting in Almaty, Kazakhstan, last month seemed “more realistic� about Iran’s position that it has a right to enrich uranium for peaceful use, Khazaee said in an interview March 18 at Bloomberg’s headquarters in New York. The U.S., the U.K., France, Germany, China and Russia proposed the easing of sanctions on Iran’s petrochemicals and gold trade in exchange for it ceasing production of medium-enriched uranium, according to officials involved in the talks. To contact the reporter on this story: Ramsey Al-Rikabi in Singapore at ralrikabi@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mike Anderson at manderson34@bloomberg.net

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