us commercial crudeoil inventories rose sharply last week along with rising stockpiles of gasoline and diesel fuel according to data released wednesday by the energy information administration benchmark us oil prices that were slightly lower before the mostlybearish report moved little afterward the nymex frontmonth crude contract for august delivery was recently flat on the day at 9585 a barrel crudeoil stockpiles rose by 33 million barrels to 4271 million barrels and are now only about 5 below the fiveyear average the eia said analysts surveyed by the wall street journal had predicted crude stockpiles would fall by 900000 barrels from the prior week oil stored at cushing okla the delivery point for us stocks increased by 316000 barrels from the previous week to 216 million barrels the eia said in its weekly report us crudeoil production fell by 100000 barrels a day to 12 million barrels a day according to the eia gasoline stockpiles jumped 58 million barrels to 2249 million barrels compared with analysts expectations for inventories to decrease by 900000 barrels from the previous week distillate stocks which include heating oil and diesel fuel rose by 27 million barrels to 1138 million barrels and are now about 18 below the fiveyear average the eia said analysts were forecasting distillates inventories would rise by just 1 million barrels from the previous week the refining capacity utilization rate rose by 04 percentage point from the previous week to 949 which compares with analysts forecasts for a 03 percentagepoint increase us oil inventories for the week ended july 8 crude gasoline distillates refinery use eia data 33 58 27 04 forecast 09 09 10 03 note numbers in millions of barrels with the exception of refinery use which is in percentage points