Crude oil for February delivery fell $1.04, or 1.3%, to $79.75 a barrel in electronic trading on Globex. The contract earlier hit an intraday low of $79.55 a barrel.
The latest decline came after the American Petroleum Institute reported late Tuesday that distillate stocks rose by 3.6 million barrels last week, while analysts polled by Platts expected a drawdown of 1.7 million barrels.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) will release its more closely watched inventory data at 10:30 a.m. Eastern on Wednesday. The EIA uses different criteria to calculate inventories than those used by the API.
MCX January crude oil futures plunged to as low as Rs 3637 per barrel down Rs 66 from yesterdays closing. It needs to break the range of 3600-3700 for further direction.