Government report shows gas, oil stockpiles grew last week

For the week ended May 2, inventories of the motor fuel rose by 800,000 barrels, or 0.4 percent, to 211.9 million barrels, which were 7.6 percent above year-ago levels, the Energy Department's Energy Information Administration said in its weekly report.

Analysts expected stockpiles of gasoline to fall by 500,000 barrels, according to a survey by Platts, the energy research arm of McGraw-Hill Cos.

Crude-oil inventories rose by 5.7 million barrels, or 1.8 percent, to 325.6 million barrels, 3.6 percent below year-ago levels. Analysts expected a gain of only 1.5 million barrels.

Demand for gasoline over the four weeks ended May 2 was about 0.1 percent higher than a year earlier, averaging nearly 9.3 million barrels a day.

At the same time, U.S. refineries ran at 85 percent of total capacity on average, a drop of 0.4 percentage point. Analysts expected capacity to rise by 0.5 percentage point.

Inventories of distillate fuel, which include diesel and heating oil, fell by 100,000 barrels to 105.7 million barrels for the week ended May 2. Analysts expected distillate stocks to rise by 1.3 million barrels last week.

At the pump, gas prices rose about a penny overnight to a national average of just under $3.62 a gallon Wednesday, nearly matching the record high set last week, and are well above the year-ago average of $3.04 a gallon, according to AAA and the Oil Price Information Service. Diesel prices remained at about $4.24 a gallon, also about a penny off last week's record high.

Light, sweet crude for June delivery fell 63 cents to $121.21 a barrel in morning trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.