Crude oil futures tumbled more than 3 dollars Wednesday after a government report showed an increase in US heating oil supplies.

On the New York Mercantile Exchange, crude oil for January delivery dropped 3.64 dollars to end at 45.49 dollars a barrel, the lowest since September 16. It was the biggest decline since a drop of 3.96 on September 24, 2001. Meanwhile, on London's International Petroleum Exchange the January Brent crude-oil futures contract fell 3.20 dollars to close at 42.31 dollars per barrel.

On Wednesday, US Energy Department said that stockpiles of distillate fuels, which included heating oil, diesel and jet fuel,rose 2 percent to 117.9 million barrels last week, the biggest gain in four months. Heating-oil supplies jumped 1 million barrels,to 49.9 million last week. It was the first increase in heating-oil supplies in about two months. Crude oil inventories also gained 849,000 barrels to 293.3 million, the highest since the week ended August 6. Oil stockpiles had increased 8.9 percent in the last 10 weeks, and supplies were 3.2 percent higher than a year ago.

Another factor pressuring on oil prices was warm weather in theUS Northeast. The US National Weather Service forecast higher-than-normal temperatures in the eastern half of the nation in the period from December 2 through December 8. Warmer-than-normal weather might make the heating-oil demand in the US Northeast 14 percent below normal.

"There is plenty of crude oil and gasoline," an analyst said inNew York. "Heating oil is starting to turn around because of the rise in refinery runs and warm weather. It looks like demand will be weak through mid-December because of the slow arrival of winter."

Source: Xinhua