Oil Futures Maintain Post-API Decline

Oil futures remained lower in midday Asian trading following late Wednesday's report from the American Petroleum Institute showed an increase in U.S. crude inventories last week.

--November Nymex light, sweet crude oil on the New York Mercantile Exchange was recently down 0.5% at $51.04 a barrel in the Globex trading session. December Brent also fell 0.5%, to $56.65.

--The API, an industry group, said in its weekly inventory report that U.S. oil supplies rose 3.1 million barrels. That's in contrast to a modest decline projected to be seen in the government's own release later Thursday.

--Despite breaking through 50- through 200-day moving averages in recent weeks, "it will probably be hard for a well-supplied market, with net-long speculators, to move significantly higher from here," said Rob Haworth, senior investment strategist at U.S. Bank Wealth Management.

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

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

October 12, 2017 00:36 ET (04:36 GMT)