June 26, 2003	Thursday	Rabi-us-Sani 25,1424

LONDON, June 25: Oil prices rocketed on Wednesday after weekly figures for US crude inventories showed an unexpected drop, confounding traders’ expectations that they were on the way up.

In London, the price of benchmark Brent North Sea crude oil for August delivery rose 85 cents to $27.47 a barrel.

New York’s benchmark light sweet crude contract for July delivery was up $1.09 at $29.87 a barrel.

Prices had stayed flat for most of the day, but shot up after the release of figures for US crude and gasoline reserves during the week ending on June 20.

According to the US Department of Energy (DoE), crude oil stocks fell by 4.1 million barrels to 284.2 million barrels over the week, with a significant drop in imports cited as the reason.

Equivalent figures by the American Petroleum Institute (API) showed an even bigger fall of 9.03 million barrels to 280.57 million barrels.

Gasoline stocks also slipped, with the DoE calculating a drop of 900,000 barrels to 208.2 million barrels and the API putting the fall at 1.7 million barrels to 209.07 million barrels.

“Both the API and the DoE reported big draws on crude stocks, it is the reason why the market is up,” commented GNI-Man Financial trader Paul Goodhew.

Oil prices have in recent weeks been sensitive to the inventory figures.—AFP