WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Oil prices fell for a second day running on Wednesday after industry data showed a significant surge in crude stockpiles in the United States, the world's largest consumer of oil.
Benchmark Brent crude futures fell 0.9 percent to $84.87 a barrel, while WTI crude futures were down 0.9 percent at $80.90.
Cude oil inventories in the United States rose by 9.337 million barrels for the week ending March 22, the American Petroleum Institute (API) reported on Tuesday. In the previous week, there was a 1.519-million-barrel drop in crude inventories.
Gasoline inventories revealed a draw of 4.4M barrels for the week, while distillate inventories increased by 500K barrels, and stockpiles at the Cushing, Oklahoma, storage hub showed a build of 2.4M barrels.
Meanwhile, the Department of Energy (DoE) reported that crude oil inventories in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) rose by another 0.7 million barrels to 363 million barrels as of March 22, marking the highest point since last April.
Speculation is also rife that major oil producers are unlikely to make any changes to their output policy at an upcoming technical meeting.
The Energy Information Administration (EIA) is due to unveil its inventory update later in the day.
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