By Mark Shenk Dec. 2 (Bloomberg) -- Oil futures extended declines after a U.S. government report showed an increase in supplies of crude and gasoline. Gasoline inventories surged 4 million barrels to 214.1 million in the week ended Nov. 27, the Energy Department said today in a weekly report. Stockpiles were forecast to increase by 700,000 barrels, according to the median of analyst estimates in a Bloomberg News survey. Inventories of crude oil rose 2.09 million barrels to 340 million, the department said. Supplies were forecast to drop by 400,000 barrels. Crude oil for January delivery fell 89 cents, or 1.1 percent, to $77.48 a barrel at 10:35 a.m. on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Oil traded at $77.70 a barrel before the release of the report at 10:30 a.m. in Washington. Oil also dropped after a report showed that oil output in Russia, the world’s largest oil producer, remained at a post- Soviet high for a second month in November as OAO Rosneft continued to ramp up the Vankor field in northern Siberia. Production was unchanged from October at 41.22 million metric tons, or 10.07 million barrels a day, the Energy Ministry’s CDU-TEK unit said in an e-mailed statement today. Output rose 2.9 percent from a year earlier. Rosneft said last week it plans to raise output at Vankor by as much as 50 percent to an average of 270,000 barrels a day next year. It anticipates peak production of more than 500,000 barrels a day from the field. Five British yachtsmen detained by Iran’s navy in the Persian Gulf last week were released today, state-run media reported. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps said questioning of the sailors made it clear they had entered Iranian waters by mistake, the Fars news agency reported. The Persian Gulf nation has the world’s second-biggest proved oil reserves. Almost a quarter of the world’s oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway between Iran and Oman at the mouth of the Persian Gulf. To contact the reporter on this story: Mark Shenk in New York at mshenk1@bloomberg.net.

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