Oil Futures Ease Further in Asia as Harvey Continues to Weigh

Oil futures have modestly added to Tuesday's slight decline as investors seemingly ignored industry data which showed a fresh drop in U.S. crude inventories last week and a rise in gasoline.

--On the New York Mercantile Exchange, light, sweet crude futures for delivery in October was recently down 0.3% at $46.31 a barrel in the Globex electronic session while September gasoline futures rose 3.2% to $1.8405 a gallon. November Brent crude on London's ICE Futures exchange fell 0.4% to $51.45 a barrel.

--The American Petroleum Institute's weekly reading said U.S. oil stockpiles fell much more than what analysts anticipated in later Wednesday's government report while gasoline supplies rose some even as Harvey barreled down on Texas late-week and caused refinery closures.

--"With 2.2 million barrels per day of refining capacity shuttered on the U.S. Gulf Coast, Tropical Storm Harvey is strongly expected to lead to drawdowns in gasoline and distillate stocks," said S&P Global Platts.

Write to Biman Mukherji at biman.mukherji@dowjones.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

August 30, 2017 00:16 ET (04:16 GMT)