Houston, Feb 15 (SocialNews.XYZ) The American Petroleum Institute (API) has reported an increase of 10.507 million barrels of crude oil in U.S. inventories for the week ending Friday.
Analysts expected a hike of 0.321 million barrels for this week.
The API reported a drop of 2.184 million barrels in the previous week.
Oil prices fell on Tuesday after the United States said it would release more crude from its Strategic Petroleum Reserve, Xinhua reported.
The West Texas Intermediate for March delivery dropped 1.08 U.S. dollars, or 1.35 per cent, to settle at 79.06 dollars a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Brent crude for April delivery lost 1.03 dollars, or 1.19 per cent, to close at 85.58 dollars a barrel on the London ICE Futures Exchange.
The U.S. Department of Energy said Monday that it would sell 26 million barrels of crude oil from the reserve, a release Congress had mandated in previous years.
The deliveries of the oil will take place from April 1 through June 30, the department said in a statement.
Traders awaited data on U.S. fuel stockpiles as the Energy Information Administration will release its weekly petroleum status report on Wednesday.
Analysts polled by S&P Global Commodity Insights expect the report to show a rise of 600,000 barrels in U.S. crude supplies.
Source: IANS
About Gopi
Gopi Adusumilli is a Programmer. He is the editor of SocialNews.XYZ and President of AGK Fire Inc.
He enjoys designing websites, developing mobile applications and publishing news articles on current events from various authenticated news sources.
When it comes to writing he likes to write about current world politics and Indian Movies. His future plans include developing SocialNews.XYZ into a News website that has no bias or judgment towards any.
He can be reached at gopi@socialnews.xyz