The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) released its weekly petroleum status report Wednesday morning. U.S. commercial crude inventories increased by 1.4 million barrels last week, maintaining a total U.S. commercial crude inventory of 522.5 million barrels. The commercial crude inventory remains at historically high levels for this time of year, according to the EIA.
Tuesday evening the American Petroleum Institute (API) reported that crude inventories fell by 1.3 million barrels in the week ending July 29. API also reported gasoline supplies decreased by 450,000 barrels and distillate supplies rose by 539,000 barrels. For the same period, analysts had estimated a decrease of around 900,000 barrels in crude inventories along with a drop of 300,000 barrels in gasoline supplies and a 100,000-barrel decrease in distillates.
Total gasoline inventories decreased by 3.3 million 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 9.8 million barrels a day for the past four weeks, up by 2.2% compared with the same period a year ago.
The sharp drop in gasoline supplies may be enough to offset the unexpected rise in crude supplies in traders’ minds. Overall, though, crude oil and petroleum product stockpiles rose by about 2.2 million barrels last week, and that may be enough to encourage the bears.
The modest rebound in the number of U.S. onshore rigs is not likely to explode any time soon. Crude prices touched $50 a barrel earlier this year, but trade down around $40 currently, and producers had been looking for some stability at the $50 mark before increasing their drilling programs.
But that was then and this is now. A report last week from Bloomberg notes that $60 a barrel is the new $50. Anadarko and Hess have both identified $60 as the price they’re looking for before increasing their drilling and production.
And that higher price must show some sign of being sticky. Short-term bursts that give back all the gains are not going to be enough to raise rig counts significantly. Services firms like Schlumberger and Baker Hughes are saying that most of the crude price increase will be eaten up by higher costs in the services supply chain, costs that the services companies have been swallowing as much as they can to keep some revenue rolling in.
Before the EIA report, benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude for September delivery traded up about 1.5% at around $40.09 a barrel, and it rose to around $40.30 shortly after the report’s release. WTI crude settled at $39.51 on Tuesday. The 52-week range on September futures is $32.85 to $54.91.
Distillate inventories increased by 1.2 million barrels last week and remain above the upper limit of the average range for this time of year. Distillate product supplied averaged over 3.6 million barrels a day over the past four weeks, down by 1.9% when compared with the same period last year. Distillate production averaged over 4.9 million barrels a day last week, flat compared with the prior week’s production.
For the past week, crude imports averaged over 8.7 million barrels a day, up by about 301,000 barrels a day compared with the previous week. Refineries were running at 93.3% of capacity, with daily input averaging about 16.9 million barrels, about 266,000 barrels a day more than the previous week’s average.
According to AAA, the current national average pump price per gallon of regular gasoline is $2.120, down from $2.148 a week ago and down more than 15 cents compared with the month-ago price. Last year at this time, a gallon of regular gasoline cost $2.651 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 up less than 0.1%, at $87.05 in a 52-week range of $66.55 to $95.55. Over the past 12 months, Exxon stock has traded up about 11.5% and is down about 15.6% since August 2014, as of Tuesday’s close.
Chevron Corp. (NYSE: CVX) traded up about 0.6%, at $100.14 in a 52-week range of $69.58 to $107.58. As of Tuesday’s close, Chevron shares have added about 16.3% over the past 12 months and trade down about 25.4% since August 2014.
The United States Oil ETF (NYSEMKT: USO) traded up about 1.3%, at $9.45 in a 52-week range of $7.67 to $16.20.
The VanEck Vectors Oil Services ETF (NYSEMKT: OIH) traded up about 1.2% to $27.41, in a 52-week range of $20.46 to $32.78.
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