Crude Price Battered After Another Huge Inventory Increase

In a Tuesday update to its Short-Term Energy Outlook, the EIA lowered its forecast 2015 average price per barrel of West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil from $55.02 to $52.15 and raised its forecast for the yearly average price for a barrel of Brent crude from $57.56 a barrel to $59.50. The continuing builds in crude oil storage are identified as the reason for the wider differential between the two benchmark crudes.

Total gasoline inventories decreased by 200,000 barrels last week, but they remain well above the upper limit of the five-year average range. Total motor gasoline supplied (the EIA’s measure of consumption) averaged over 8.7 million barrels a day for the past four weeks, up by 2.8% compared with the same period a year ago.

Distillate inventories increased by 2.5 million barrels last week but remain in the lower half of the average range. Distillate product supplied averaged 4.1 million barrels a day over the past four weeks, up by 12.8% when compared with the same period last year. Distillate production averaged 4.8 million barrels a day last week, up about 200,000 barrels a day compared with the prior week’s production.

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Tuesday evening the American Petroleum Institute (API) reported that crude inventories fell by 404,000 barrels, gasoline inventories rose 1.7 million barrels and distillate inventories also rose by 1.7 million barrels in the week ending March 6. For the same period, analysts had estimated an increase of 4.2 million barrels in crude inventories, a drop of 1.7 million barrels in gasoline stockpiles and a decline of 2.3 million barrels in distillate inventories.

Before the EIA report, WTI crude for April delivery was trading down about 0.3% at around $48.15 a barrel Wednesday morning. The WTI price plunged below $48.00 (down about 1% for the day) immediately after the report was released. The 52-week range on WTI futures is $44.37 to $99.53.

For the past week, crude imports averaged 6.8 million barrels a day, down by 575,000 barrels a day compared with the previous week. Refineries were running at 87.8% of capacity, with daily input of more than 15.3 million barrels, about 187,000 barrels a day above the previous week’s average.

The EIA now forecasts total U.S. crude production to rise from 8.65 million barrels a day in 2014 to 9.35 million barrels a day in 2015 and to 9.49 million barrels a day in 2016. February production reached that 9.35 million barrel per day average. As production increases and storage tanks fill up, crude oil prices are highly likely to continue falling.

According to AAA, the current national average pump price per gallon of regular gasoline is $2.447, down from $2.451 a week ago but up from $2.213 a month ago. Last year a gallon of regular cost $3.487 on average in the United States. Gasoline prices have finally begun to reflect the drop in crude prices that we have seen in the past several weeks.

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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 down about 2.3%, at $17.50 in a 52-week range of $16.30 to $39.44.

The Market Vectors Oil Services ETF (NYSEMKT: OIH) traded down about 0.7%, at $32.75 in a 52-week range of $31.63 to $58.01.