The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) released its weekly petroleum status report Wednesday morning. U.S. commercial crude inventories increased by 8 million barrels last week, maintaining a total U.S. commercial crude inventory of 476.6 million barrels. The commercial crude inventory remains near levels not seen at this time of year in at least the past 80 years.

Tuesday evening, the American Petroleum Institute (API) reported that crude inventories rose by 7.1 million barrels in the week ending October 16. For the same period, analysts had estimated an increase of 3.5 million barrels in crude inventories.

Total gasoline inventories decreased by 1.5 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 3.1% compared with the same period a year ago.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is meeting Wednesday with non-OPEC producers, including Russia and Mexico, to discuss production cutbacks, but there is little reason to believe that cutbacks will actually result. Saudi Arabia is not interested in reducing production and that should be the end of the story.

Analysts at Jefferies released a note earlier this week indicating that access to capital continues to be relatively free for most U.S. producers. Only about 2% of the capital available to producers has been cut on loans and credit facilities backed by reserve-based assets. Estimates had reckoned a cut of 15%.

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In the futures market last week, hedge funds cut their exposure to both long and short futures contracts on benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil. In the Commitment of Traders report for October 13, published by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) last Friday, hedge funds cut 8,381 long contracts and dumped 17,256 contracts from their short positions. Managed money holds 269,937 long positions compared with 87,595 short positions. Open interest decreased by 29,725 contracts to 1,645,951 week over week.

Before the EIA report, WTI crude for December delivery traded down about 2.4% at around $45.15 a barrel. The WTI price fell to around $45.00 immediately following the report’s release, down about 2.8% on the day. The 52-week range on WTI futures is $39.22 to $81.61.

Distillate inventories decreased by 2.6 million barrels last week and remain in the middle of the average range for this time of year. Distillate product supplied averaged over 3.8 million barrels a day over the past four weeks, up by 5.2% when compared with the same period of last year. Distillate production averaged over 4.7 million barrels a day last week, up about 100,000 barrels a day compared with the prior week’s production.

For the past week, crude imports averaged 7.5 million barrels a day, up by 156,000 barrels a day compared with the previous week. Refineries were running at 86.4% of capacity, with daily input of over 15.3 million barrels, about 78,000 barrels a day above the previous week’s average. This marks the first week in the past four where throughput has risen at the nation’s refineries.

According to AAA, the current national average pump price per gallon of regular gasoline is $2.236, down nearly 3% from $2.303 a week ago and from $2.289 a month ago. Last year at this time, a gallon of regular cost $3.094 on average in the United States.

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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 up about 0.3%, at $81.03 in a 52-week range of $66.55 to $97.20. Year to date, Exxon stock traded down about 12.6% and is down about 16.4% since early November, as of Wednesday’s close.

Chevron Corp. (NYSE: CVX) traded down about 0.2%, at $89.81 in a 52-week range of $69.58 to $120.17. As of Tuesday’s close, Chevron shares have dropped about 19.7% year to date and trade down about 25% since early November.

The United States Oil ETF (NYSEMKT: USO) traded down about 1.8%, at $14.47 in a 52-week range of $12.37 to $31.50.

The Market Vectors Oil Services ETF (NYSEMKT: OIH) traded down about 0.6% to $30.38, in a 52-week range of $26.00 to $46.02.

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