Brent oil eases more on U.S. stock build and slow global growth

By Libby George and Himanshu Ojha

LONDON (Reuters) - Brnet crude oil fell a little more on Wednesday as increased U.S. crude stockpiles and a weak World Bank growth forecast conspired to keep prices close to the near-six year lows touched in the previous session.

Energy Information Administration data showed U.S. crude stocks rose by 5.4 million barrels in the last week, far more than analysts' expectations for an increase of 417,000 barrels, pointing to continued oversupply in the market.

"It is a squarely bearish report with large across-the-board inventory builds," said John Kilduff, a partner with Again Capital LLC, New York.

"At this point, the bar has been raised in terms of engendering the next leg lower for prices."

February Brent crude fell by 10 cents to trade at $46.49 a barrel by 1620 GMT, while West Texas Intermediate crude for February rose by 15 cents to $46.04.

The World Bank lowered its 2015 and 2016 world economic growth forecasts on Tuesday, reinforcing worries about sluggish growth in energy demand.

Oil prices that have fallen by about 60 percent since June are wreaking havoc on economies that depend on commodities exports. Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov called for a 10 percent spending cut on everything but defence on Wednesday.

At the same time, Europe is on shaky ground despite the European Central Bank's bond-buying stimulus plan.

"The global economy is running on a single engine ... the American one," the World Bank's chief economist, Kaushik Basu, said. "This does not make for a rosy outlook for the world."

FORECASTS CUT

Analysts said oil prices would remain weak as a result of oversupply, prompting cuts to price forecasts for 2015 and 2016.

Oil had tumbled nearly 5 percent on Tuesday before closing down 1.8 percent, with global benchmark Brent briefly trading at par with U.S. prices for the first time in three months as some traders moved to take advantage of ample U.S. storage space.

The U.S. shale oil boom and steady OPEC production have created a global supply glut. U.S.-based PIRA Energy Group said American stocks could be approaching 80 percent of capacity by the spring, in a report published before the EIA's data release.

Outside the United States, some of the world's biggest oil traders have booked supertankers to store at least 25 million barrels at sea.

"OPEC is not going to come to the rescue of the market," said Harry Tchilinguirian, global head of commodity markets strategy at BNP Paribas. "The onus is on floating storage."

Producer club OPEC has shown no sign of changing strategy since it decided late last year to maintain output despite slowing Asian and European economic growth.

(Additional reporting by Henning Gloystein and Florence Tan in Singapore; Editing by Michael Urquhart, David Goodman and Sam Wilkin)