Crude Oil Inventory Rise Pushes Prices Lower

By Paul Ausick Updated Apr 27, 7:46PM EDT · Published Mar 12, 10:50AM EDT

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The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) released its weekly petroleum status report Wednesday morning. U.S. commercial crude inventories increased by 6.2 million barrels last week, maintaining a total U.S. commercial crude inventory of 370 million barrels and moving to the upper half of the five-year range for this time of the year.

Total gasoline inventories decreased by 5.2 million barrels last week, but they remain near the upper limit of the five-year average range. Total motor gasoline supplied (the EIA’s measure of consumption) averaged more than 8.5 million barrels a day over the past four weeks. That was down about 0.3% from the same period a year ago.

Distillate inventories fell by 500,000 barrels last week and are below the lower limit of the average range. Distillate product supplied averaged more than 3.6 million barrels a day over the past four weeks, down by 0.2% when compared with the same period of last year. Distillate production totaled 4.6 million barrels a day last week, roughly flat with the prior week.

Tuesday evening, the American Petroleum Institute (API) reported that crude inventories rose by 2.6 million barrels in the week ending March 7, together with a drop of 2.2 million barrels in gasoline supplies and a decrease of 839,000 barrels in distillate supplies. For the same period, Platts estimated a rise of 2.3 million barrels in crude inventories, a decline of 1.8 million barrels in gasoline inventories and a drop of 900,000 barrels in distillate inventories.

Crude prices closed at $100.03 on Tuesday and were trading down about 1.5% before the EIA report at around $98.60 a barrel. The West Texas Intermediate (WTI) price fell another 0.3% to around $98.28 shortly after the report was released. The price differential between WTI and Brent has risen to about $9 a barrel, after dropping to a multi-month low of $6 last week.

For the past week, crude imports averaged more than 7.3 million barrels a day, up about 199,000 barrels a day from the previous week. Refineries were running at 86% of capacity, with daily input of 15 million barrels a day, about 200,000 barrels less than the previous week’s total.

According to AAA, the current average pump price per gallon of regular gasoline is $3.49, up from $3.464 a week ago and $3.294 a month ago. Last year a gallon of regular cost $3.703 on average in the United States.

About the Author Paul Ausick →

Paul Ausick has been writing for a673b.bigscoots-temp.com for more than a decade. He has written extensively on investing in the energy, defense, and technology sectors. In a previous life, he wrote technical documentation and managed a marketing communications group in Silicon Valley.

He has a bachelor's degree in English from the University of Chicago and now lives in Montana, where he fishes for trout in the summer and stays inside during the winter.