Energy Information Administration reported its inventories data on Wednesday and shocked investors with an increase of 5 million in crude oil inventories for the week ending January 6^th, 2012. Analysts were expecting the decrease of 1 billion barrels in the crude oil supplies of the respective week while another trade group also released its data on Tuesday and reported increase of 400,000 barrels in oil inventories.

The report by EIA also disclosed the oil refineries are utilizing 85.6 percent of their utilization capacity while analysts were expecting the figure of 85.2 percent.

Gasoline stockpiles also increased by 3.6 million barrels against the analysts’ expected increase of 1.8 million barrels for the week. Distillate supplies which include heating oil and diesel gained 4 million barrels while analysts polled by Platts forecasted the surge of 1.4 million barrels for the week.

Crude oil futures in reaction to the inventories data fell 1.3 percent or $1.37 to settle at $100.87 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Gasoline futures for February delivery also fell 0.3 percent or $0.01 to $2.76 per gallon while heating oil futures contract for the same month delivery slipped 1.2 percent or $0.04 to $3.06 per gallon.

Natural gas futures for the February delivery declined 5.7 percent or $0.17 to $2.77 per million British thermal units.