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SINGAPORE, Feb 10 (Reuters): Oil prices held steady today unfazed by a fall in crude supplies in the United States, where stocks are more than 20 million barrels above levels a year ago.
US light crude climbed 6 cents to $45.52 a barrel, barely changed since Monday when prices fell to just over the $45 level.
US government data Wednesday showed a 1-million-barrel decline in crude inventories, bucking analysts' expectations of a similar-sized rise. Despite the fall, stocks remain more than 8 percent above where they were this time last year.
The Energy Information Administration reported a 500,000- barrel increase in gasoline inventories, in line with market forecast and extending the national stock surplus to 9 million barrels compared with a year ago.
European stocks fell by 10 percent in January as exports to the United States surged to an unseasonably high 2.5 million tonnes, industry monitors Euroilstock said Wednesday.
Forecasts of warmer-than-normal weather in February and March have shifted the market's focus away from heating oil and towards gasoline ahead of a seasonal pick-up in demand for motor oil in spring and summer.
"So distillate has abdicated its former market leadership, but the probability of an early-spring gasoline price spike looks increasingly remote," SG Commodities Research said in a note.
Distillate stocks, which include heating oil, fell more than expected after blizzards and a cold snap in January sapped supply by 3 million barrels, compared with predictions for a 2.1 million barrel drop.
Dealers said news that top exporter Saudi Arabia would maintain supplies at current levels in March had reduced the chance of an imminent cut in output by the OPEC producers' cartel and may weigh on oil prices in coming days.
The Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries is due to review production policy on March 16 in Iran, but dealers had been wary that rising supplies and any sharp fall in prices may trigger an early OPEC cut agreement by telephone.
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