Oil trades lower
Oil traded lower on Wednesday after U.S. crude supplies were reported to have risen unexpectedly last week.
On the New York Mercantile Exchange, light sweet crude for August delivery fell more than $4 US early in the trading session before recovering some ground. Oil finished down $2.45 at $134.55 a barrel.
The U.S. Energy Department reported that crude supplies increased by 803,000 barrels last week. Analysts had been projecting a decline of 1.7 million barrels.
The department said demand for gasoline retreated by 2.1 per cent in the face of pump prices that are averaging more than $4 US a gallon across the United States. Gasoline supplies fell last week, the opposite of what market watchers had been predicting.
Earlier in the day, the U.S. government's Energy Information Administration said high oil prices have not resulted in reduced world demand for oil.
"Global energy demand grows despite the sustained high world oil prices that are project to persist over the long term," the department reported.
Last week, China boosted domestic prices in a bid to curb demand in the country's booming economy.
"Oil pricing will ease significantly only if the developing markets also show demand easing, and so far we haven't seen that," said Victor Shum, an energy analyst at Purvin & Gertz in Singapore.
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