Oil reserves rushed to market

LONDON - World oil prices fell on Thursday when Washington began to release some of its emergency oil reserves.

"The fact that the whole [release of] 30 million barrels has been taken up has had quite a dramatic impact on the market," Tony Machacek of broker Prudential Bache said.

Oil prices began to unravel on Wednesday, after weekly data revealed that crude-oil stockpiles in the US were piling up.

Distillates, that include home heating-oil, rose a modest 300,000 barrels, according to American petroleum institute figures, to leave them still 28.5 million barrels below last year.

The reserve crude-oil loan might go some way towards replenishing those stocks because most of the barrels were sweet crude and rich in heating oil, the product US consumers needed most.

The US department of energy detailed - on Wednesday - a list of 11 companies that had won rights to borrow the oil.

Deliveries of the oil would begin immediately and would be completed by the end of November.