DOE Oil Inventory Heads the Right Way (OIH, DIG, USO, OIL)

The Department of Energy has just released this week’s oil inventories data.  While there are gains almost on all counts, this may not be enough.  The key ETFs that react to the news are the Oil Services HOLDRs (NYSE: OIH), the Ultra Oil & Gas ProShares (NYSE: DIG), the United States Oil (NYSE: USO) ETF and the iPath S&P GSCI Crude Oil Total Return Index ETN (NYSE: OIL).   NYMEX WTI Crude is up $0.06 per barrel at $76.08 10:34 AM EST after the news, which is a far lower price than what has been seen into weekly inventory data in recent weeks.

Crude oil inventories rose 1.019 million barrels to 337.808 million barrels; Dow Jones had estimates at +1.5 million barrels, but we were happy with anything over about 800,000 barrels.

Gasoline inventories rose 1.003 million barrels to 210.085 million barrels; Dow Jones was at +500,000 which is very close to what traders had said they were looking to.

Distillates was the one soft spot with a draw down of 529,000 barrels to 166.868 million barrels.  The good news is that refining capacity came right in-line with estimates at 80.25%.  Frankly, we were getting anxious as we never like seeing that under the 80.0% threshold we saw last week.

The Oil Services HOLDRs (NYSE: OIH) is down 0.7% at $118.72, the Ultra Oil & Gas ProShares (NYSE: DIG) is down 0.7% at $35.45, the United States Oil (NYSE: USO) ETF is down 0.35% at $38.45, and the iPath S&P GSCI Crude Oil Total Return Index ETN (NYSE: OIL) is down 0.4% at $25.40.

At least this week had gains on the three top components.  It’s better than what we had seen.

JON C. OGG