Crude oil stockpiles fell last week

For the week ended June 27 crude-oil inventories fell by 2 million barrels, or 0.7 percent, to 299.8 million barrels, which were 15.3 percent below year-ago levels, the Energy Department's Energy Information Administration said in its weekly report.

Analysts had expected a draw of just 1.2 million barrels, according to a survey by Platts, the energy research arm of McGraw-Hill Cos.

Meanwhile, gasoline inventories rose by 2.1 million barrels, or 1 percent, to 210.9 million barrels, which were 3.1 percent above year-ago levels. Analysts actually had expected stockpiles of the motor fuel to fall by 500,000 barrels.

Demand for gasoline over the four weeks ended June 27 was 1.7 percent lower than a year earlier, averaging more than 9.3 million barrels a day.

At the same time, U.S. refineries ran at 89.2 percent of total capacity on average, a gain of 0.6 percentage point from the prior week. Analysts expected capacity to rise by 0.5 percentage point.

Inventories of distillate fuel, which include diesel and heating oil, rose by 1.3 million barrels to 120.7 million barrels for the week ended June 27. Analysts expected distillate stocks to rise by 2.4 million barrels.

At the pump, gas prices rose less than a penny overnight to a new record-high national average of over $4.09 a gallon Wednesday, and remain well above the year-ago average of about $2.95 a gallon, according to AAA and the Oil Price Information Service.

In midday trading, light, sweet crude for August delivery rose 50 cents to $141.47 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.