Oil and gas futures prices retreated Tuesday on expectations that a government inventory report on Wednesday will again show that crude and gasoline stocks rose last week.

The weekly report by the Energy Department’s Energy Information Administration has become critical for analysts and traders during a spring and early summer that have seen an unusually high number of refinery outages. Those refinery problems have been widely cited by analysts as the reason for record gas prices, and high oil and gasoline futures prices.

An increase in inventories in Wednesday’s report could take some air out of the futures market, analysts said.

“People are trying to hit the exit door before these numbers come out tomorrow,” said James Cordier, president of Liberty Trading Group in Tampa, Fla.

Light, sweet crude for August delivery fell $1.41 to settle at $67.77 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, and gasoline for July dropped 5.56 cents to settle at $2.2469 a gallon.

In other Nymex trading, heating oil futures for July fell 4.91 cents to $1.9933 a gallon, and natural gas prices dropped 6.3 cents to settle at $6.877 per 1,000 cubic feet.

At the pump, gas prices fell by 0.3 cent overnight to a national average of $2.975 a gallon, according to AAA and the Oil Price Information Service. Retail gas prices, which typically lag futures prices, have fallen steadily since their May 24 peak of $3.227, though the rate of decline has flattened out in recent days.

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