Crude Oil Price Slips on Increased Gasoline, Distillate Stockpiles

Energy

Published: December 3, 2014 10:55 am

Last Updated: April 27, 2020 7:49 pm

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) released its weekly petroleum status report Wednesday morning. U.S. commercial crude inventories decreased by 3.7 million barrels last week, maintaining a total U.S. commercial crude inventory of 379.3 million barrels. Crude inventory remains in the upper half of the five-year range for this time of the year.

Total gasoline inventories increased by 2.1 million barrels last week and remain well below the lower limit of the five-year average range. Total motor gasoline supplied (the EIA’s measure of consumption) averaged 9.2 million barrels a day for the past four weeks, up by 3.2% compared with the same period a year ago.

Distillate inventories increased by 3 million barrels last week and remain near the lower limit of the average range. Distillate product supplied averaged over 3.9 million barrels a day over the past four weeks, down by 1.5% when compared with the same period last year. Distillate production averaged 5 million barrels a day last week, roughly 100,000 barrels a day more than the prior week’s production.

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Tuesday evening, the American Petroleum Institute (API) reported that crude inventories dropped by 6.5 million barrels in the week ending November 28. The trade group also said gasoline stockpiles were unchanged and distillate inventories rose by 2.5 million barrels. For the same period, analysts polled by Platts estimated an increase of 380,000 barrels in crude inventories.

Before the EIA report, West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude for January delivery was trading up about 1% at around $67.90 a barrel Wednesday morning. The WTI price dipped slightly to around $67.70 immediately after the report was released.

For the past week, crude imports averaged more than 7.3 million barrels a day, down by 170,000 barrels a day compared with the previous week. Refineries were running at 93.4% of capacity, with daily input of about 16.4 million barrels a day, about 399,000 barrels a day above the previous week’s average.

Last week’s decision by OPEC oil ministers to leave their production quotas unchanged sent crude oil prices plunging to lows below $64 a barrel at times. That makes the current price of around $68 a barrel look a lot better.

According to AAA, the current national average pump price per gallon of regular gasoline is $2.746, down from $2.810 a week ago and from $2.980 a month ago. Last year a gallon of regular cost $3.263 on average in the United States.

Here is a look at how share prices for two exchange traded funds reacted to this latest report.

The United States Oil ETF (NYSEMKT: USO) traded up about 0.2%, at $25.64 in a 52-week range of $25.26 to $39.44.

The Market Vectors Oil Services ETF (NYSEMKT: OIH) traded up about 2.7%, at $38.42 in a 52-week range of $36.85 to $58.01.

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