NEW YORK (AP) -- Oil and gas futures reacted little Wednesday after the government reported larger-than-expected draws on crude and gasoline inventories.

Futures retained gains achieved earlier in the day on news of two tropical storms threatening gas and oil installations in the Gulf of Mexico.
Light, sweet crude for September delivery rose 90 cents to $73.28 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, and September gasoline rose 3.26 cents to $2.0064 a gallon.
In London, September Brent crude futures rose 87 cents to $71.38 a barrel on the ICE Futures exchange.
In other Nymex trading, heating oil futures rose 3.1 cents to $1.0135 a gallon, and natural gas prices gained 22 cents to $7.16 per 1,000 cubic feet.
In its weekly inventory report, the Energy Department’s Energy Information Administration said refinery utilization rose 0.5 percentage points to 91.8 percent of capacity in the week ended Aug. 10, exactly in line with the expectations of analysts surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires. Refinery utilization fell by a surprise 2.3 percentage points last week.
Crude oil inventories fell 5.2 million barrels, the EIA said, and gasoline inventories dropped 1.1 million barrels. Analysts had expected crude stockpiles to fall 2.1 million barrels, and gasoline inventories to fall 400,000 barrels.
Distillates, which include heating oil and diesel fuel, rose 200,000 barrels. Analysts had expected a 1 million barrel increase.
Imports of gasoline fell last week by an average of 184,000 barrels a day to 1.213 million barrels, the EIA said. Crude oil imports fell 125,000 barrels a day, on average, to 9.873 million barrels.
Demand for gasoline averaged over 9.6 million barrels a day over the last four weeks, about 0.4 percent above the same period last year, the EIA said.
Tropical Storm Dean strengthened in the Atlantic but remained far from land, forecasters said. Dean could reach hurricane strength by Friday as it moves over warm waters where atmospheric conditions were favorable for intensification, forecasters said. It is still too early to accurately determine Dean’s exact path.
Another tropical depression — the fifth so far of the Atlantic hurricane season — formed late Tuesday and was expected to become a tropical storm before making landfall in Texas on Thursday morning, the National Weather Service said. If its wind speeds reach the 39 mph threshold for a tropical storm, it would be named Erin