oil futures traded slightly lower early thursday edging down from a sevenyear high but underpinned by supply concerns west texas intermediate crude for february delivery cl1 clg22 fell 35 cents or 04 to 8661 a barrel on the new york mercantile exchange the most actively traded march contract cl00 clh22 was down 17 cents or 02 at 8563 a barrel march brent crude brn00 brnh22  the global benchmark fell 37 cents or 04 to 8807 a barrel on ice futures europe wti and brent on wednesday both posted their highest finishes since october 2014 through wednesday wti was up 156 so far in the new year while brent had rallied 137 “it shouldn’t be too surprising to see the market taking a breather after the scale of the move we have seen so far this year” said warren patterson head of commodities strategy at ing in a note also the american petroleum institute late wednesday afternoon reported that us crude supplies rose by 14 million barrels in the week ended jan 14 according to sources the industry trade group also reportedly showed a weekly rise in gasoline inventories of 35 million barrels while distillate stocks were down 12 million barrels crude supplies at the cushing okla delivery hub fell 15 million barrels official data from the energy information administration is due thursday morning on average the eia is expected to show crude inventories down by 700000 barrels according to a survey of analysts conducted by sp global platts the survey also calls for a weekly supply increase of 24 million barrels for gasoline and an inventory decline of 11 million barrels for distillates