The price of crude oil futures fell on Wednesday, despite the hurricane bearing down on the Gulf of Mexico. West Texas Intermediate light, sweet crude oil futures fell .40 percent to $75.63 per barrel.
President Barack Obama declared a state of emergency in Texas, while BP, Royal Dutch Shell, ConocoPhillips and Exxon Mobil evacuated workers from drilling rigs and platforms across the region. However, an analyst interviewed by Bloomberg News said that “Alex does not represent a destructive hazard to a large portion of the energy production region.”
Hurricane Alex is currently a Category One storm, the lowest on the Saffir-Simpsons hurricane wind scale.
One of the factors pushing down the price of oil futures was a report from the U.S. Energy Department that revealed unexpected increases in U.S. stockpiles of gasoline and crude.
Abroad, concerns about the pace of Chinese growth and consumption didn’t do much to support the price of oil either. China is the world’s second largest consumer of petroleum and other energy sources, and its rate of growth far outstrips that of most developed nations.
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