Oil prices jump to new high for the year

Oil prices hit a new high for the year Wednesday ahead of a government report on the levels of crude in storage that have neared 19-year highs recently.

Benchmark crude for June delivery rose $1.42 cents to $55.26 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, levels not seen since November.

Weekly inventory data from the Energy Information Administration is due later Wednesday morning, but an overnight report from the American Petroleum Institute showed a 1-million-barrel slip in crude oil stocks and a 2.9-million-barrel drop in gas supplies.

"A sign that demand is improving perhaps? Or maybe those refiners are still indifferent to increasing supply," Phil Flynn, an analyst at Alaron Trading Corp., wrote in a morning note. "It was probably a little of both."

Meanwhile, the national retail average price for a gallon jumped more than 3 cents overnight to $2.11 a gallon, according to auto club AAA, the Oil Price Information Service and Wright Express. That is about 7 cents a gallon below what it was a month ago, but $1.50 below its year-ago price.

Analysts expect the EIA to report a build of 2.2 million barrels of oil for the week ended May 1, according to a survey by Platts, the energy information arm of McGraw-Hill Cos.

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