Oil hovers below $86 amid demand growth

NEW YORK -- Oil prices fell Thursday as signs of stronger demand were tempered by a bigger-than-expected build in natural gas supplies and a surprise jump in initial claims for unemployment benefits.

Benchmark crude for May delivery fell 33 cents to settle at $85.51 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Earlier, traders pushed prices above $86, encouraged by signs of strong economic growth in China, which said on Thursday that its gross domestic product grew 11.9 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier. Singapore's economy expanded 13 percent from a year ago.

That wasn't enough to support higher oil prices for long.

PFGBest analyst Phil Flynn said China's "blistering rate" of 11.9 percent is raising worries that "China is going to have to do something dramatic to try to slow things down."

"Those fears about China may be one reason the oil market seems less than impressed with China's strong GDP or perhaps the market feels that yesterday's move up in oil basically priced strong China growth in."

Oil and natural gas prices sank after the Energy Department said natural gas stockpiles rose more than expected last week. The Energy Information Administration said in its weekly report that the country's natural gas inventories grew by 87 billion cubic feet to about 1.76 trillion cubic feet for the week ended April 9.

Analysts expected a build of 76 billion to 80 billion cubic feet, according to a survey by Platts, the energy information arm of McGraw-Hill Cos.

Energy prices were also held back by a Labor Department report that said first-time requests for jobless benefits rose to 484,000 last week, the highest level since late February.

In other Nymex trading in May contracts, heating oil rose a penny to settle at $2.2523 a gallon, and gasoline slid 0.65 cent to settle at $2.3262 a gallon. Natural gas dropped 21.4 cents to settle at $3.985 per 1,000 cubic feet.

In London, Brent crude rose $1.02 to settle at $87.17 on the ICE futures exchange.