us inventories of crudeoil and fuels declined acrosstheboard for a second straight week last week according to data released wednesday by the energy information administration benchmark us oil prices that were slightly lower before the mostlybullish report was released turned higher afterward the nymex frontmonth crude contract for november delivery was recently up 05 at 8694 a barrel commercial crudeoil stockpiles fell by 14 million barrels to 4292 million barrels and are now about 3 below the fiveyear average the eia said analysts surveyed by the wall street journal had predicted crude stockpiles would rise by 13 million barrels from the prior week oil stored at cushing okla the delivery point for us stocks increased by 273000 barrels from the previous week to 26 million barrels the eia said in its weekly report us crudeoil production was unchanged from the previous week at 12 million barrels a day according to the eia gasoline stockpiles fell by 47 million barrels to 2075 million barrels compared with analysts expectations for inventories to decrease by just 1 million barrels from the previous week distillate stocks which include heating oil and diesel fuel dropped by 34 million barrels to 1109 million barrels and are now about 21 below the fiveyear average the eia said analysts had forecast distillates inventories would fall by 14 million barrels from the previous week the refining capacity utilization rate rose by 07 percentage points from the previous week to 913 analysts were forecasting a 04 percentagepoint decline from the week prior us oil inventories for the week ended sept 230 crude gasoline distillates refinery use eia data 14 47 34 07 forecast 13 10 14 04 note numbers in millions of barrels with the exception of refinery use which is in percentage points