World oil prices lost almost half a dollar today as crude stocks in the United States swelled by seven million barrels to the highest levels in 20 months.
Gasoline also took hefty losses of more than 1.5 cents a gallon - bringing prices off yesterday's nine-month peak - after a smaller-than-forecast draw in inventories gave some relief to concerns of a supply crunch in the summer.
London's Brent crude slipped 43 cents in early dealings to $27.20 a barrel while US benchmark light crude fell 44 cents to $27.80, bringing losses in the last two days to almost a dollar.
Industry group the American Petroleum Institute (API) reported a 7.3 million barrel build up in US crude stocks to 315.2 million barrels in the week ended April 13th.
The API releases weekly stocks' figures after the close of business each Tuesday. The Energy Information Administration - the statistical arm of the US Department of Energy - publishes similar inventory data each Wednesday.
The API gains pushed US crude stocks - languishing at 25-year lows just over a month ago - to the highest level since late August 1999 after rising 40 million barrels, nearly 15 per cent, in five straight weeks of increases.
US crude tanks stand almost 11.6 million barrels above the same time last year mainly because of continued strong imports into the world's biggest energy consumer.