By the OGJ Online Staff
HOUSTON, June 14 -- Energy futures prices across the board fell in international markets Wednesday.
The July contract for benchmark US light, sweet crudes dropped 34¢ to $28.84/bbl on the New York Mercantile Exchange, while the August contract was down 23¢ to $29.16/bbl.
Unleaded gasoline for July delivery fell 2.18¢ to 87.33¢/gal Wednesday following an American Petroleum Institute report late Tuesday that US gasoline inventories increased by 6.3 million bbl last week to 215.6 million bbl total.
API also said distillate fuel stocks were up 274,000 bbl to 107.4 million bbl total. But US crude inventories dropped by 13.2 million bbl to a total 312.2 million bbl last week.
So far, there has been no noticeable reaction among traders to temporary disruptions of refining operations along the Gulf Coast as a result of flooding from Tropical Storm Allison.
The July contract for home heating oil dipped 0.03¢ to 80.14¢/gal Wednesday, and natural gas for the same month fell 18.9¢ to $4.11/Mcf.
Natural gas injections into US underground storage totaled 105 bcf last week, down from 117 bcf the previous week but up from 105 bcf a year ago, said Robert Morris, energy analyst at Salomon Smith Barney Inc. US natural gas storage levels now exceed 1.5 tcf, or 73 bcf more than during the same period last year, Morris said in his weekly exploration and production report Wednesday.
The pace of natural gas injections compared to a year ago narrowed for the third consecutive week to 3.9 bcfd. "We believe the gap will continue to moderate due largely to some reversal in fuel switching (among industrial customers) back to natural gas," Morris said.
Meanwhile, he said, revised weather projections for near term warmer temperatures in parts of the US triggered some firming of natural gas prices. Temperatures across the US last week were generally 2.1% cooler than a year ago and 5.2% cooler than the 10-year average.
In London, the July contract for North Sea Brent crude lost 12¢ to $29.34/bbl Wednesday on the International Petroleum Exchange. The July natural gas contract was down 4.1¢ to the equivalent of $2.83/Mcf on the IPE.
IPE officials said that market set a new daily record Tuesday in the trade of gas oil futures with 60,639 lots traded. That's equivalent to more than 6 million tonnes of gas oil, officials said. It exceeds the previous record of 57,778 lots traded on Aug. 4, 1999.
The official news agency for the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries was closed Wednesday for a public holiday and did not issue its usually daily report on the average price for OPEC's basket of seven crudes.
