U.S. Crude Oil Inventories Keep Declining While Products Increase
After falling by 7.85 million barrels the week before, crude oil stocks fell for the fourth consecutive week this week, by 6.426 million barrels, according to American Petroleum Institute (API) statistics released on Tuesday. Analysts expected a decrease of 3.884 million barrels.
According to API statistics, the United States' oil stockpiles have only increased by 6 million barrels so far this year. While this was happening, the amount of crude in the country's Strategic Petroleum Reserves decreased by 206 million barrels, or roughly 32 times as much.
Since February 1984, the SPR today has the least amount of crude oil.
The Department of Energy discharged 2.1 million barrels from the Strategic Petroleum Reserves in the week ending December 2, leaving the SPR with just 387 million barrels, which caused a decrease in commercial crude oil inventories.
The API recorded a significant 7.85 million barrel decrease in crude oil stockpiles the previous week.
Tuesday saw a dramatic decline in WTI prices as the market responded to the weak G7 price ceiling on Russian oil and the OPEC+ meeting's status quo, which didn't result in a production cut as some had hoped.
WTI was down $2.50 (-3.25%) on the day at $74.43 a barrel as of 3:51 p.m. EST. This is a drop in price of almost $4.50 per barrel from the previous week. At $79.64 a barrel, Brent crude was down $3.04 (3.69%) on the day, or about $5.50 per barrel, compared to the previous week.
For the fourth week in a consecutive, for the week ending November 25, U.S. crude oil production remained at 12.1 million bpd, which is 400,000 bpd higher than the levels observed at the beginning of the year but still falls short by 1 million bpd of the levels recorded at the beginning of the era.
In addition to the 2.85 million barrel increase from the previous week, the API recorded a 5.93 million barrel increase in gasoline stockpiles for the week ending December 2.
In addition to the 4.01 million barrel rise from the previous week, distillate stockpiles increased by 3.55 million barrels this week.
Compared to the reported decline of 150,000 barrels previous week, Cushing stocks increased by 30,000 barrels in the week ending December 2.
Within a short time of the report release, WTI was trading at $74.32.
For Oilprice.com, by Julianne Geiger
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