U.S. commercial crude oil inventories decreased last week while gasoline supplies increased twice as much as expected, the Energy Department reported Wednesday.

In the week ended July 6, the nation's crude oil stocks fell by 1.4 million barrels, more than twice the 600,000-barrel decline expected by analysts, to 352.6 million.

Gasoline supplies, however, jumped by 1.2 million barrels to 205.6 million. Analysts had been predicting a gain of 640,000 barrels for last week.

Stockpiles of distillates, which include heating oil and diesel fuel, also rose by 800,000 barrels last week. The gain was in line with analyst expectations.

The report showed that refinery utilization was at 90.2 percent, up 0.2 percentage point from the previous week. That defied analysts' expectations of a rise of half a percentage point.

Meanwhile, gasoline imports rose by 31,000 barrels a day to 1.423 million barrels a day last week, while imports of crude oil declined by 753,000 barrels a day to 10.025 million barrels a day.

Last week, gasoline demand grew to 9.6 million barrels a day, 1.4 percent higher than the same period of last year, according to the report.

The figures for commercial crude oil inventories do not include the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which currently holds crude oil of about 6.89 million barrels.