The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) released its weekly petroleum status report Wednesday morning. U.S. commercial crude inventories increased by 1.2 million barrels last week, maintaining a total U.S. commercial crude inventory of 489.4 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 1.6 million barrels in the week ending November 27. For the same period, analysts had estimated a decrease of 300,000 barrels in crude inventories.
Total gasoline inventories increased by 100,000 barrels last week, according to the EIA, and remain well above the upper limit of the five-year average range. Total motor gasoline supplied (the agency’s measure of consumption) averaged about 9.2 million barrels a day for the past four weeks, down by 0.9% compared with the same period a year ago.
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) begins its last meeting of the year on Friday, and while the Saudis say they are willing to listen to arguments for production cuts there is, in all likelihood, little chance that will happen. Non-OPEC production, particularly in the United States, has dropped and, though there is still a lot of extra crude oil sloshing around in storage tanks and VLCCs, the impact of lower U.S. production won’t be felt immediately, or even in the next few months.
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Before the EIA report, benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude for January delivery traded down about 2% at around $41.30 a barrel. The WTI price bounced higher to around $41.80 immediately before the report’s release, but quickly shrunk back below the $41.00 level. The 52-week range on WTI futures is $39.97 to $70.27. That high is nearly $6 a barrel below last week’s 52-week high.
Distillate inventories increased by 3.1 million barrels last week and remain in the upper half 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, down by 0.9% when compared with the same period last year. Distillate production averaged about 5.2 million barrels a day last week, up about 200,000 barrels a day compared with the prior week’s production.
For the past week, crude imports averaged over 7.7 million barrels a day, up about 414,000 barrels a day compared with the previous week. Refineries were running at 94.5% of capacity, with daily input of averaging 16.8 million barrels, about 423,000 barrels a day above the previous week’s average.
According to AAA, the current national average pump price per gallon of regular gasoline is $2.038, down about 1% from $2.058 a week ago and from $2.191 a month ago. Last year at this time, a gallon of regular gasoline cost $2.76 on average in the United States.
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 down about 0.8%, at $81.25 in a 52-week range of $66.55 to $95.33. Year to date, Exxon stock traded down about 12% and is down about 16% since early November of 2014, as of Tuesday’s close.
Chevron Corp. (NYSE: CVX) traded down about 0.8%, at $91.87 in a 52-week range of $69.58 to $114.82. As of Tuesday’s close, Chevron shares have dropped about 18% year to date and trade down more than 23% since early November 2014.
The United States Oil ETF (NYSEMKT: USO) traded down about 1.6%, at $12.74 in a 52-week range of $12.37 to $25.89.
The Market Vectors Oil Services ETF (NYSEMKT: OIH) traded down about 1% to $31.12, in a 52-week range of $26.00 to $39.80.
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