Oil prices fell on Wednesday, weighed down by ample supplies despite ongoing output cuts by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and looming U.S. sanctions against major crude exporter Iran.
Brent crude futures were down 62 cents at $77.81 U.S. per barrel mid-morning Wednesday from their last close. U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures were at $70.87 a barrel, down 44 cents.
Despite the dips, both financial oil benchmarks remained close to their November 2014 highs of $79.47 U.S. and $71.92 U.S. a barrel respectively, reached the previous day.
Physical crude markets are sagging under the weight of unsold barrels of oil, while the 50-percent rise in the oil price in the last year is encouraging major companies such as ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch Shell, Chevron, BP and Total.
Spot crude oil cargo prices are at their steepest discounts to futures prices in years as sellers are struggling to find buyers for West African, Russian and Kazakh cargoes, while pipeline bottlenecks trap supply in west Texas and Canada.
The bottleneck in North America likely contributed to a 4.9-million-barrel rise in U.S. crude oil inventories, to 435.6 million barrels, that the private American Petroleum Institute reported on Tuesday.
Official U.S. government fuel storage data is due for release by the Energy Information Administration later on Wednesday.
