The Department of Energy is out with its weekly oil and gasoline inventory data. Crude oil stocks fell by 191,000 barrels in the last week to 384.438 million barrels. We were expecting a larger drop, but Dow Jones was calling for a drop of as much as 1.6 million barrels. The drawdown in oil is still running slow. United States Oil (AMEX: USO) has ticked up on the news and is trading up 0.6% at $31.62 on over 2 million shares so far this morning.
Even gasoline inventories fell by 1.724 million barrels to 201.8 million barrels. This was a much larger drop as Dow Jones was looking for a build of 600,000 barrels and we were hoping for a flat number. United States Gasoline (AMEX: UGA) is up 1.1% at $48.16 on the day but on very light trading volume.
The refining capacity remains very high at 92.0%, up from 91.0% a week earlier and versus a Dow Jones target of 90.9% expected. This continues to show upside as refineries seem to be in the profitable zone for refining operations now that oil prices are lower again. We are seeing a mixed bag on two of the refining leaders: Phillips 66 (NYSE: PSX) is down 0.4% at $33.34 and Valero Energy Corporation (NYSE: VLO) is up 0.3% at $22.35.
The oil and gas services companies are finding a mixed bag so far even though the ETF ticked up after the inventories report. The Market Vectors Oil Services ETF (AMEX: OIH) is up $0.02 at $35.29 this morning.
JON C. OGG
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