LONDON, Oct 3: World oil prices advanced slightly on Wednesday after official data showed that stockpiles of US distillates unexpectedly fell last week ahead of the northern hemisphere winter, traders said.

The price of London’s Brent North Sea crude for November delivery gained 10 cents to $77.48 per barrel.

New York’s main futures contract, light sweet crude for delivery in November, climbed 20 cents to $80.25 per barrel.

“What is extremely worrisome in this report is the drawdown in distillates inventories because they’re still well below year ago levels at this point ...and I think that’s critical,” Alaron Trading analyst Phill Flynn said in reference to the US government data.

The US Department of Energy, in its latest weekly inventories report, said that stockpiles of distillates, which include heating fuel, unexpectedly dropped by 1.2m barrels to 135.9m barrels during the week ended September 28.

Analysts had forecasted a rise of 1.3 million barrels.

Elsewhere the DoE said that stockpiles of crude oil rose by 1.2 million barrels last week, while analysts had expected a fall.

Oil prices are staging a modest rebound from sharp losses over the past four trading days, which followed record highs struck in late September.—AFP