The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) released its weekly petroleum status report Thursday morning, one day later than usual due to the Columbus Day holiday. U.S. commercial crude inventories increased by 7.6 million barrels last week, maintaining a total U.S. commercial crude inventory of 468.6 million barrels. The commercial crude inventory remains near levels not seen at this time of year in at least the past 80 years.

Wednesday evening, the American Petroleum Institute (API) reported that crude inventories rose by 9.3 million barrels in the week ending October 9. For the same period, analysts had estimated an increase of 1.8 to 2.6 million barrels in crude inventories.

Total gasoline inventories decreased by 2.6 million barrels last week, according to the EIA, but remain above the upper limit of the five-year average range. Total motor gasoline supplied (the agency’s measure of consumption) averaged about 9.1 million barrels a day for the past four weeks, up by 3.4% compared with the same period a year ago.

Refinery throughput continued to fall last week as scheduled maintenance and turnaround to winter-grade fuel continues. By the end of October, refinery throughput should be rising again.

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On the production front, the EIA’s drilling productivity report was released earlier this week and forecasts that production in the major oil and gas regions of the Lower 48 will drop by 93,000 barrels a day month-over-month in November. An interesting point here is that new-well production per rig continues to rise in all major oil plays while legacy well production drops. In the Eagle Ford play, for example, new well production per rig is up just under 200 barrels a day and legacy production is down just over 25,000 barrels a day. Estimating a new well total of 50, that’s roughly 10,000 more barrels a day, so the decline is really 15,000 barrels a day. That’s just not enough to have a major impact on total production of more than 9.5 million barrels a day.

In the futures market last week, hedge funds reversed course again, dumping short contracts and adding to long positions. In the Commitment of Traders report for October 6, published by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) last Friday, hedge funds added 15,192 long contracts and dumped 7,885 contracts from their short positions. Managed money holds 278,318 long positions compared with 104,851 short positions. Open interest increased by 57,774 contracts to 1,675,676 week-over-week.
Before the EIA report, benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude for November delivery traded down just less than 2% at around $45.78 a barrel. The WTI price fell to around $45.68 immediately following the report’s release, down slightly more than 2% on the day. The 52-week range on WTI futures is $38.51 to $81.47.

Distillate inventories decreased by 1.5 million barrels last week and remain in the middle of the average range for this time of year. Distillate product supplied averaged 4 million barrels a day over the past four weeks, up by 5.4% when compared with the same period last year. Distillate production averaged 4.6 million barrels a day last week, down about 500,000 barrels a day compared with the prior week’s production.

For the past week, crude imports averaged over 7.3 million barrels a day, up by 247,000 barrels a day compared with the previous week. Refineries were running at 86% of capacity, with daily input of 15.3 million barrels, about 292,000 barrels a day below the previous week’s average.

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According to AAA, the current national average pump price per gallon of regular gasoline is $2.293, down less than a penny from $2.297 a week ago and down from $2.322 a month ago. Last year at this time, a gallon of regular cost $3.177 on average in the United States.

Here is a look at how share prices for two blue-chip stocks and two exchange traded funds reacted to this latest report.

Exxon Mobil Corp. (NYSE: XOM) traded down less than 0.1%, at $80.14 in a 52-week range of $66.55 to $97.20. Year to date, Exxon stock traded down about 13% and is down about 17% since early November, as of Wednesday’s close.

Chevron Corp. (NYSE: CVX) traded up about 1.5%, at $88.32 in a 52-week range of $69.58 to $120.17. As of Tuesday’s close, Chevron shares have dropped more than 20% year to date and trade down about 25.6% since early November.

The United States Oil ETF (NYSEMKT: USO) traded down about 2%, at $14.76 in a 52-week range of $12.37 to $31.91.

The Market Vectors Oil Services ETF (NYSEMKT: OIH) traded down about 1% to $30.85, in a 52-week range of $26.00 to $46.02.

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