Oil futures dropped as much as 2% before recovering and trading flat at midmorning Wednesday, whipsawed after the U.S. Department of Energy released weekly petroleum inventory data.
Futures had fallen about 1% earlier in the morning, as traders awaited the latest data as well as new information about efforts to rescue the European economy.
Data for the week ended Sept. 23 from the Energy Information Administration, the statistical and analytical wing of the U.S. Energy Department, showed that crude stocks rose by 1.9 million barrels, gasoline stocks rose by 791,000 barrels, distillate stocks rose by 72,000 barrels and that refinery utilization declined by 0.5 percentage point, to 87.8% of capacity.
A survey of 15 analyst forecasts by Dow Jones Newswires found crude was expected to rise by 700,000 barrels, gasoline was expected to rise by 900,000 barrels, distillates were expected to rise by 100,000 barrels, and refinery capacity was expected to decrease by 0.7 percentage points to 87.6% of capacity.
Light, sweet crude for November delivery fell as low as $82.76 U.S. after the data were released, before bouncing back to pre-release levels. At 11:02 a.m. EDT, crude was down 93 cents, or 1.1%, to $83.52 U.S. a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Brent crude on the ICE Futures Europe exchange was down 59 cents, or 0.6%, to $106.55 U.S. a barrel.
Front-month October reformulated gasoline blendstock, or RBOB, was down 0.53 cent, or 0.2%, to $2.6902 U.S. a gallon. October heating oil fell 0.3 cents, or 0.1%, to $2.8736 U.S. a gallon.
