As gasoline demand weakens, oil inventories fall again. U.S. commercial crude oil inventories fell much more sharply than expected for the eighth week in a row.

The U.S. Energy Information Agency (EIA) announced on Wednesday that gasoline stocks recovered in the face of weaker demand, while black gold stocks declined. According to the weekly report, crude inventories plunged 7.9 million barrels (MB) to 437.6 MB for the week ended July 9. Analysts surveyed by Bloomberg had expected a median decline of 4 MB. Gasoline stocks, on the other hand, rebounded slightly by one million barrels to 236.5 MB, after the previous week's record drop. Analysts were still expecting them to decline by 2 MB.

Gasoline demand, however, fell significantly (-760,000 barrels per day) compared to the week of early July. And total demand for oil products also stalled week-on-week at 9.28 million barrels per day (-2.2 mbd), due to a decline in demand for gasoline but also for distillates such as diesel (-675,000 barrels per day). Slightly down before the release of the EIA report, the price of a barrel of WTI fell, giving up 2.30% to 73.52 dollars around 16:15 GMT.