Oil prices finished with a nominal drop on Wednesday as U.S. government data revealed an eighth weekly climb in a row for crude stockpiles, according to Bloomberg MarketWatch.
April West Texas Intermediate crude fell 18 cents, or 0.3%, to settle at $53.83 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
May Brent crude, the global benchmark, fell 15 cents, or 0.3%, to end trading at $56.36 a barrel on the London ICE Futures Exchange.
Early Wednesday, the U.S. Energy Information Administration reported an increase of 1.5 million barrels in domestic crude oil supplies for the week ending February 24. Data from the government agency had already shown gains in each of the previous seven weeks. The total crude inventories of 520.2 million barrels last week mark a new weekly record based on EIA data.
The inventory rise was smaller than the 2.5 million-barrel weekly climb reported by the American Petroleum Institute late Tuesday and the 2.1 million-barrel climb forecast by analysts polled by S&P Global Platts.
Back on the New York Mercantile Exchange, April natural gas tacked on 2.5 cents, or 0.9%, to settle at $2.799 per million British thermal units ahead of Thursday’s EIA supply update.