The American Petroleum Institute (API) reported that U.S. crude oil inventories increased by 1.174 billion barrels compared to 5.521 billion barrels the previous week.
Analysts had expected weekly inventory withdrawals to be 2 million barrels. The total number of barrels of crude oil acquired so far this year is now in the red, with a net decline in crude oil inventories of more than 47 million barrels since April, according to API data.
On Monday, the Department of Energy (DoE) reported that crude oil inventories in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) increased by 300,000 barrels last week, with SPR inventories remaining at a nearly 40-year low of 350.6 million barrels. . The amount being poured into SPR is only a fraction of the hundreds of millions of barrels sold from SPR over the past few years.
Oil prices rose significantly on Tuesday ahead of API data, with Brent crude trading at $92.10 as of 11:51 a.m. ET, up 1.61% from the previous week, while WTI It was trading at $89.03 per barrel, up 1.99%. That’s up more than $1 a barrel since this time last week.
Gasoline inventories also increased this week, increasing by 4.21 million barrels compared to 5.09 million barrels the previous week. Gasoline inventories for this period are about 5% lower than the average for the past five years. Distillate inventories increased by 2.592 million barrels, on top of the previous week’s increase of 310,000 barrels, and are 14% below the five-year average for this time of year.
Cushing inventories decreased by 2.417 million barrels.
Written by Julianne Geiger, Oilprice.com
