MW: Oil falls for fifth day as build-up in inventories expected
By Moming Zhou & Polya Lesova, MarketWatch
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Oil futures fell Tuesday for a fifth straight session, extending their losing streak to the longest in five months, as investors anticipated weekly inventories reports would show a rise in U.S. crude and gasoline supplies.
Crude oil for January delivery dropped 77 cents, or 1%, to $73.16 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The benchmark contract has lost more than 6% in the five sessions starting Dec. 2, the longest losing streak since the six sessions ended July 8.
"The overall supply and demand balance in the energy market continues to lean generally bearish," said Brian Niemiec, an analyst at Susquehanna Financial Group. Meanwhile, "the drop in energy and commodity prices coincides with a stronger dollar and a generally weaker equity market."
The American Petroleum Institute will report last week's inventory data at 4:30 p.m. Eastern on Tuesday, while the Energy Information Administration will release its more closely watched data on Wednesday morning.
Analysts polled by Platts expect a 600,000-barrel build in crude stocks. They also project a rise of 1.8 million barrels in gasoline stocks as well as a decline of 400,000 barrels in distillates stocks, which include diesel and heating oil,
Analysts surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires expect crude inventories to increase 800,000 barrels.
Also weighing on oil prices on Tuesday, the U.S. dollar rose as worries about credit in Greece and Dubai weighed on equities and helped the dollar extend gains that began Friday.
The dollar index (DXY 75.99, +0.23, +0.30%) , which tracks the performance of the greenback against a basket of other major currencies, rose to 75.824 compared with 75.766 late Monday. Currencies
Also in energy trading, January gasoline lost 1.1% to $1.92 a gallon, January heating oil slid 0.5% to $1.9993 a gallon.
Bucking the trend, January natural-gas futures gained 1.6% to $5.051 per million British thermal units. The contract surged more than 8% on Monday as a cold snap took hold in the U.S. Northeast and Midwest, the major gas consuming regions.
Separately, the New York Mercantile Exchange started trading a new type of crude futures, the Gulf Coast Sour Crude futures, on Monday. The current benchmark crude futures are based on the West Texas Intermediate crude, a type of light sweet crude oil that's easy to refine.
