The API said weekly gasoline stocks were down 850,000 barrels to 201.6million barrels, in contrast to the market's forecast of a 1.2 millionbuild. Gasoline stocks were nearly 10 per cent lower than at the same week ayear earlier, the API data showed.

The Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) released new buyinginterest in the market as recent comments indicated that it was not preparedto supply more oil. Opec heavyweights such as Saudi Arabia and Iran havesaid in recent weeks that with price targets met, no new oil policy wasneeded, a signal the cartel would keep its output unchanged in a reviewmeeting scheduled for late June. The Opec group had bowed once to consumerpressures. Nine members in late March agreed to raise its output on paper bysome 1.45 million barrels-per-day (bpd) from April.

Opec power Iran, which stood outside the agreement, later joined to take upthe quota that it would have been allocated, raising the total for the 10Opec members' output by 1.7 million bpd. The extra oil pushed crude pricesdown in April by as much as 30 per cent from nine-year peaks in early Marchat above $34 a barrel. But recent buoyant world oil demand, particularlyfrom the US gasoline market, fueled a perception that more Opec oil wasagain needed to keep prices stable.

The US Energy Information Administration, the Energy Department'sstatistical arm, said on Monday that it now expects world oil demand to riseabove its own forecast. In San Diego on Tuesday, the US energy secretaryBill Richardson commented that gasoline stocks were "too low and need tobuild a little". The US consumes some 40 per cent of world gasoline supply,and much demand will emerge during summer as holiday makers begin travels.But Richardson's office also said on Tuesday he was unlikely to visit thePersian Gulf to lobby for more oil supplies before the Opec meets on June21.