Associated Press Oil prices fall on report of high crude supplies

Crude prices resume slide after gov't report shows more oil in storage than expected

NEW YORK (AP) -- Oil prices settled lower on Wednesday as the government said crude supplies shrank less than analysts expected and stock markets showed only modest gains after Tuesday's rally.

Benchmark crude lost 35 cents to settle at $75.42 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract dropped as low as $73.83 before recovering most of its losses.

Gasoline pump prices dropped by another half cent to a national average of $2.737 for a gallon of unleaded regular. That's down 4.3 cents from a week ago and 10.3 cents above a year ago.

In its weekly report the Energy Department's Energy Information Administration said crude supplies fell last week by 800,000 barrels, considerably less than the drop of 2.25 million barrels that analysts forecast in a survey by Platts, the energy information arm of McGraw-Hill Cos. Gasoline stocks were virtually unchanged and supplies of distillate fuels -- like diesel and heating oil -- rose by 1.1 million barrels, about as much as expected.

U.S. refineries ran at a surprising 90 percent of total capacity, a rise of 1.9 percentage points from the prior week. Analysts expected capacity to slip to 87 percent. More...