Crude oil stockpiles rose unexpectedly last week

For the week ended Sept. 26 crude-oil inventories rose by 4.3 million barrels, or 1.5 percent, to 294.5 million barrels, which is 5.8 percent below year-ago levels, the Energy Department's Energy Information Administration said in its weekly report.

Analysts had expected inventories to remain reltatively flat, with a possible rise or fall of 1.5 million barrels, according to a survey by Platts, the energy information arm of McGraw-Hill Cos.

Gasoline inventories increased by 900,000 barrels, or 0.5 percent, to 179.6 million barrels, which is 9.7 percent below year-ago levels. Analysts expected stockpiles of the motor fuel to fall in the range of 1 million to 3 million barrels.

Demand for gasoline over the four weeks ended Sept. 26 was 4.5 percent lower than a year earlier, averaging more nearly 8.9 million barrels a day.

At the same time, U.S. refineries ran at 72.3 percent of total capacity on average, a gain of 5.6 percentage point from the prior week. Analysts expected capacity to rise in a range of 5 percent to 8 percent to 71.7 percent to 74.7 percent.

Inventories of distillate fuel, which include diesel and heating oil, fell by 2.3 million barrels to 123.1 million barrels for the week ended Sept. 26. Analysts expected distillate stocks to slip by 1 million to 2 million barrels.

At the pump, gas prices dipped about a penny overnight to a new national average of $3.619 gallon Wednesday, and remain well above the year-ago average of about $2.788 a gallon, according to AAA and the Oil Price Information Service.

Light, sweet crude for October delivery fell $3.88 to $96.76 barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.