Investing.com - Oil prices remained on the back foot on Wednesday after data showing a larger-than-expected build in U.S. crude oil inventories last week.
Crude oil for May delivery on the New York Mercantile Exchange was down 79 cents, or 1.87%, to trade at $41.44 a barrel by 1036 ET.
Global benchmark Brent was down 62 cents at $44.05.
The Energy Information Administration reported that U.S. crude inventories increased by 6.6 million barrels in the latest week, bringing total crude stocks to 536.5 million barrels.
Analysts had expected a storage build of 1.85 million barrels.
The figures came a day after industry group the American Petroleum Institute said U.S. crude stocks rose by 6.2 million barrels to 536.3 million last week, against expectations of a 1.9 million barrel increase.
Oil prices had already come under pressure earlier in the day amid concerns that a meeting of major producers in Doha on Sunday to discuss freezing output will do little to rein in ballooning oversupply and rebalance the oil market.
Saudi Arabia's oil minister on Wednesday appeared to rule out the possibility of a production freeze ahead of the meeting.
According to a Reuters report citing comments by the minister published Wednesday in a Saudi newspaper al-Naimi said to “forget about this topic,” when asked about cuts to his country’s production.
The remarks came a day after reports that Russia and Saudi Arabia had reached consensus on an oil output cap ahead of Sunday’s meeting.