U.S oil inventories rebound sharply last week

U.S. commercial crude oil inventories posted a big gain unexpectedly last week, rebounding from consecutive eight weeks of declines, the Energy Department reported. In the week ended Jan. 11, the nation's commercial crude oil inventories surged 4.3 million barrels, in contrast to a drop of 300,000 barrels expected by analysts, to 287.1 million. Gasoline stockpiles, meanwhile, rose 2.2 million barrels last week to 215.3 million. Supplies of distillates, which include heating oil and diesel fuel, increased by 1.1 million barrels to 129.8 million. Both the gains were roughly in line with analysts' expectations. The report also showed that U.S. crude imports increased last week by an average of 583,000 barrels a day to 10.40 million, while gasoline imports dropped by 82,000 barrels to an average of 938,000 million barrels a day. Last week, gasoline demand declined to 9.116 million barrels a day, 118,000 barrels lower than the previous week. U.S. refinery utilization plummeted 4.2 percentage points to 87.1 percent of capacity. The figures for commercial crude oil inventories do not include the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which currently holds crude oil of about 6.981 million barrels. Due to the unexpected jump in crude inventories, crude oil futures on the New York Mercantile Exchange dropped 1.72 dollars Wednesday to 90.18 dollars per barrel after falling as low as 89. 26 dollars earlier. It was the first time the crude price fell below 90 dollars per barrel since Dec. 19 last year.