* Gasoline leads losses on oil complex with 4 pct decline
* Markets watches U.S (Other OTC: UBGXF – news) . Fed for possible rate hike this week (New (KOSDAQ: 160550.KQ – news) throughout, updating market activity and comments to U.S. session; changes byline and previous LONDON dateline)
By Barani Krishnan
NEW YORK, Sept 14 (Reuters) – Crude oil fell more than 3 percent on Monday, dragged down by a tumble in gasoline prices, although data indicating the biggest draw since June at the delivery point for U.S. crude tempered some losses.
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Gasoline futures on the New York Mercantile Exchange slumped almost 4 percent. Traders cited weakness in nearby contracts versus farther-dated ones for RBOB gasoline on NYMEX (RBc1-RBc2) as the peak U.S. summer driving season wound to a close.
“I think this is surprising to many and catching them off guard as the trend of strong spreads in RBOB are over now,” said Scott Shelton, commodities specialist at ICAP (LSE: IAP.L – news) in Durham, North Carolina.
U.S. crude futures’ front-month was down 95 cents at $ 43.68 a barrel by 11:40 a.m. EDT (1540 GMT) after declining to as low as $ 43.59.
The front-month in Brent, the global benchmark for crude, was off $ 1.60 at $ 46.54, versus a session low at $ 46.36.
Crude futures briefly came off their lows after market intelligence firm Genscape reported a drawdown of about 1.8 million barrels last week at the Cushing, Oklahoma delivery point for U.S. crude, traders who saw the data said.
If confirmed, the numbers from Genscape would be the largest since the actual drawdown of 1.87 million barrels at Cushing in the week to June 19, official data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration showed.
Financial markets are also waiting to see whether the U.S. Federal Reserve will raise interest rates this week for the first time in nearly a decade. Should rates rise, analysts expect oil to fall, as a stronger dollar would undermine demand from importing countries.
Earlier on Monday, oil fell after growth in China’s investment and factory output missed forecasts in August. A recent run of weak data from the world’s second-largest economy has raised the chances that third-quarter growth may dip below 7 percent for the first time since the financial crisis.
Oil prices have dropped almost 60 percent since June 2014 on the largest global surplus of crude in modern times amid concerns about a slowing Chinese economy.
“We think we are near the floor, but nothing precludes that we temporarily move lower,” BNP Paribas (Xetra: 887771 – news) global head of commodity strategy Harry Tchilinguirian told the Reuters Global Oil Forum on Monday.
(Additional reporting by Lisa Barrington in London and Henning Gloystein in Singapore; Editing by William Hardy and Chris Reese)
