Heating oil down on stock build

6 January 2010

Written by Kim Bardsley

Wholesale heating oil prices tumbled on the New York Mercantile Exchange this morning (January 6th) after a surprise build in distillate inventories in the US.

Both heating oil and crude prices have risen dramatically in recent trading sessions as investors predicted that the freezing temperatures witnessed across much of Europe and America would drive up demand for heating fuels.

However, a report from the American Petroleum Institute (API) published late yesterday revealed that distillate stocks, which include heating oil and similar fuels, actually climbed last week.

Despite this unexpected build, many analysts are still predicting that similar weekly demand data due to be published by the Energy Information Administration (EIA) later today will show an overall decline in stocks.

A Bloomberg poll forecasts that the organisation will record a 1.85 million-barrel drawdown later today. The EIA figures are broadly considered to be more comprehensive than the API data.

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