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Oil prices slid nearly 2% on Thursday after U.S. data showed a surprise build in crude stockpiles last week related in part to ongoing reductions at refineries along the Gulf of Mexico following Hurricane Laura.

Brent futures LCOc1 fell 73 cents, or 1.8%, to settle at $40.06 a barrel, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude CLc1 fell 75 cents, or 2.0%, to settle at $37.30.

After the market close, WTI briefly traded down over $1 a barrel and Brent was down as much as 99 cents.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) said crude inventories rose 2.0 million barrels last week. [EIA/S]

That confirmed the direction of the 3 million-barrel increase reported by the American Petroleum Institute (API), but was a surprise compared with the 1.3 million-barrel decrease that analysts forecast in a Reuters poll.

Reference: Reuters