2023.03.2919:13:00UTC+00Oil Futures Fail To Hold Early Gains, Settle Modestly Lower

Oil futures failed to hold early gains and ended modestly lower on Wednesday, despite data showing a drop in crude stockpiles last week.

Oil prices climbed higher earlier in the session amid rising supply disruption risks after Turkey halted exports of some 450,000 barrels of crude per day.

Barclays said any protracted outage of Kurdish exports until the end of the year would imply a $3 a barrel upside to the bank's $92 a barrel Brent price forecast for 2023.

West Texas Intermediate Crude oil futures for May ended lower by $0.23 or about 0.3% at $72.97 a barrel, coming off a high of $74.37 a barrel.

Brent crude futures were down $0.64 or 0.82% at 77.50 a barrel a little while ago.

Data from Energy Information Administration (EIA) showed crude stockpiles fell by 6.076 million barrels in the week ended March 24, as against expectations for an increase of 92,000 barrels.

Gasoline inventories dropped by 2.904 million barrels last week, more than an expected decline of 1.625 million barrels.

The EIA data also said distillate stockpiles increased by 281,000 barrels, as against expectations for a drop of 1.455 million barrels.