Investing.com – Oil prices fall on Wednesday after data from the American Petroleum Institute (API) showed U.S. crude stockpiles rose unexpectedly last week.
Crude Oil WTI Futures for September delivery slipped 0.6% to $68.37 per barrel at 12:30AM ET (04:30 GMT), while Brent Oil Futures for October delivery were also down 0.4% to $73.92 for one barrel.
Official data from the API showed domestic crude inventories rose by 5.6 million barrels lat week, while a poll by Reuters had forecast a fall of 2.8 million barrels.
Official data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) is due later in the day.
Reports that U.S. President Trump offered to meet with Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani at "any time," without restrictions also received some focus.
The offer from Trump was somewhat surprising as it comes just weeks after a heated exchange between the two presidents, raising questions about whether the United States' was softening its position on Iran. That scaled back investor expectations for a massive loss of Iranian crude from the market.
Iranian officials reportedly rejected the proposal, preferring Trump to first make up for pulling the United States out from the multilateral nuclear deal. The nuclear trade deal had lifted sanctions on Iran in exchange for regular inspections of the country's nuclear facilities.
Meanwhile, the U.S. dollar rose on Wednesday after reports that cited three people familiar with the internal deliberations revealed that the Trump administration is considering to raise its planned 10% tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese goods to 25%.
The U.S. Dollar Index, which measures the greenback against a basket of other currencies, rose 0.1% to 94.42.