Oil falls to $71 as US inventories rise
NEW YORK — Oil prices fell to near $70 a barrel Thursday on more evidence of consumer anxiety and also growing supplies of unused crude and natural gas.
Benchmark crude for September delivery fell 97 cents to $71 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. In London, Brent prices fell 57 cents to $74.94 a barrel on the ICE Futures exchange.
Still, crude prices have been rising since mid-July and dragging retail gas prices along.
Prices at the pump have risen every day since July 22, when the national average peaked just above $2.69 per gallon.
Prices added less than a penny overnight to $2.61 a gallon, according to auto club AAA, Wright Express and Oil Price Information Service. That’s almost a dime more than last week and gas is now about as expensive as it was at this time last month.
Crude has traded near $71 a barrel for the last couple days after shooting up from below $62 last week as investors try to gauge whether a weak U.S. economy justifies a further rally.
There is still plenty of crude. Over the past two weeks more than 7 million barrels have gone into storage, rather than being refined into jet fuel, diesel or gasoline.
“Supplies of crude oil are well above seasonal norms … yet our friends, the speculators, still like owning Nymex crude oil, a lot of Nymex crude oil,” said analyst Stephen Schork. “Therefore, once again high prices are becoming the justification for high prices.”
In other Nymex trading, gasoline for August delivery fell 2 cents to $2.0298 a gallon and heating oil dropped 1.4 cents to $1.9427. Natural gas for August delivery fell 26 cents to $3.779 per 1,000 cubic feet.
Associated Press writers Pablo Gorondi in Budapest and Alex Kennedy in Singapore contributed to this report.
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