Crude oil stockpiles fell again last week

For the week ended June 20 crude-oil inventories rose by 800,00 barrels, or 0.3 percent, to 301.8 million barrels, which were 14.4 percent below year-ago levels, the Energy Department's Energy Information Administration said in its weekly report.

Analysts had expected a draw of 1.7 million barrels, according to a survey by Platts, the energy research arm of McGraw-Hill Cos.

Gasoline inventories fell by 100,000 barrels to 208.8 million barrels, which were 2.3 percent above year-ago levels. Analysts expected stockpiles of the motor fuel to fall by 750,000 barrels.

Demand for gasoline over the four weeks ended June 20 was 2.1 percent lower than a year earlier, averaging nearly 9.3 million barrels a day.

At the same time, U.S. refineries ran at 88.6 percent of total capacity on average, a drop of 0.7 percentage point from the prior week. Analysts expected capacity to rise by 0.4 percentage point.

Inventories of distillate fuel, which include diesel and heating oil, rose by 2.8 million barrels to 119.4 million barrels for the week ended June 20. Analysts expected distillate stocks to rise by only 1.7 million barrels.

At the pump, gas prices dipped less than a penny overnight to remain at a national average of $4.07 a gallon Wednesday, but remain well above the year-ago average of about $2.98 a gallon, according to AAA and the Oil Price Information Service.

In midday trading, light, sweet crude for August delivery fell $3.90 to $133.10 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

(This version CORRECTS gasoline inventories estimate in 4th graf)