Oil falls following U.S. production news

                         Oil futures are trading lower during Thursday’s Asian session, due in part to reports out of the U.S. Wednesday that the world’s largest oil consumer is getting closer to shedding its status as a net import of the commodity. 

On the New York Mercantile Exchange, light, sweet crude futures for May delivery fell 0.28% to USD93.24 per barrel in Asian trading Thursday after modestly rising during Wednesday’s U.S. session on the back of supportive comments from the Federal Reserve. 

The Federal Reserve left interest rates unchanged at near zero and made no changes to its monthly USD85 billion bond-buying program known as quantitative easing. 

In other news, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration's Short-Term Energy Outlook. U.S. oil production will outpace imports by 2 million barrels per day by 2014. By some accounts, the U.S. was a net oil exporter last year for the first time in two decades, but the EIA report confirms what many industry observers and market participants already expected. 

Bolstered by soaring production at shale formations in Texas and North Dakota, the U.S. could tilt its trade balance in its favor with steadily increasing oil output. Still, the country is a long way from being entirely energy independent. Production is currently about 7 million barrels per day, but consumption averaged about 18.5 million barrels per day last year. 

On a related note, U.S. oil giants ConocoPhillips, Anadarko Petroleum and Marathon Oil, along with smaller Cobalt Energy, said a well the companies are partnering on in the Gulf of Mexico could produce up to 700 million barrels of crude, more than double the original estimate. 

Elsewhere, Brent futures for May delivery fell 0.19% to USD108.38 per barrel on the ICE Futures Exchange.
Courtesy : INVESTING.COM