Few things unnerve drivers more than some inexplicable knocking sound that portends engine trouble. The latest weekly inventory figures from the Energy Information Administration, released Wednesday, amount to much the same thing for an oil market already driving defensively. We are in the middle of U.S. driving season, when gasoline demand peaks. On that front, the latest data show at least one trend that should, all else equal, rev up oil bets: average gasoline demand over the four weeks ended July 3 was up 5.3%, year over year. And yet, and yet…there is no escaping the sound of gears grinding. Despite relatively healthy gasoline demand, 1.2 million barrels of the stuff flowed into storage tanks last week, keeping gasoline inventories in the upper half of their seasonal average range. What is more, inventories of crude oil increased by 400,000 barrels. That isn’t a huge amount; the U.S. consumes that […]