FRANKFURT (MarketWatch) -- Oil futures moved lower early Thursday, as investors locked in some gains after prices rallied nearly 6% in the previous session. Crude oil for November delivery dropped 65 cents, or 0.9%, to $69.96 a barrel in electronic trading on Globex. The contract earlier hit an intraday low of $69.78 a barrel. Oil futures rallied 5.8% on Wednesday after government data showed an unexpected decrease in gasoline inventories last week as demand increased and gasoline imports slumped. "Moves of this magnitude often are followed by equally sharp corrections, so the recent gains may not stand up, arguing in the least for a strategy of watching and waiting," said Edward Meir, analyst at MF Global, in a note to clients. Gasoline inventories fell by 1.6 million barrels last week, the Energy Information Administration said Wednesday. The EIA also reported an increase of 2.8 million barrels in crude inventories and a buildup of 300,000 in distillate stockpiles. The U.S. dollar gained against major currencies and weighed on dollar-denominated oil prices. The dollar index (DXY 77.03, +0.37, +0.49%) , which tracks the performance of the greenback against a basket of currencies, rose 0.4% to 76.973. Also on Globex, November reformulated gasoline fell 2 cents to $1.74 a gallon and November heating oil dropped 3 cent to $1.81 a gallon. November natural gas futures dropped 8 cents, or 1.6%, to $4.76 per million British thermal units. The EIA is scheduled to release last week's natural-gas-inventories data on Thursday. Analysts surveyed by Platts expect an increase of 60 billion to 64 billion cubic feet. If realized, the buildup would push U.S. natural gas inventories to a record near 3,590 billion cubic feet.

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