Investing.com – Oil prices dipped on Thursday following a rout in global stock markets. Data from the American Petroleum Institute (API) was in focus as it showed U.S. crude inventories jumped more than expected last week.
Crude Oil WTI Futures for November delivery slid 1.7% to $71.92 a barrel by 12:40AM ET (04:40 GMT) on the New York Mercantile Exchange, while London’s Intercontinental Exchange showed that Brent Oil Futures for December delivery also traded 1.8% lower to $81.59 per barrel.
Oil prices extended their 2% losses from the previous session as stocks in China and Japan tumbled more than 4% on Thursday, after U.S. stocks suffered their worst one-day drops in eight months overnight. The S&P 500 fell more than 3%, its biggest one-day decline since February.
Meanwhile, the API reported U.S. crude inventories jumped by 9.7 million barrels last week. Analysts expected an increase of 2.6 million barrels.
Crude stocks at the Cushing, Oklahoma, delivery hub rose by 2.2 million barrels, the industry group added.
Official data from the U.S. government’s Energy Information Administration is due later in the day.
Elsewhere, energy companies in the U.S. Gulf Coast of Mexico had turned off daily production of about 670,800 barrels of oil and 726 million cubic feet of natural gas due to the Category 4 storm Michael. Roughly 42% of daily crude output in the Gulf has been cut since Tuesday, the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement said.
“Down time is expected to be brief and Gulf of Mexico output now accounts for a comparatively small portion of total U.S. production,” Jim Ritterbusch, president of Ritterbusch and Associates, said in a note.
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