Crude oil inventories in the United States increased by 3.5 million barrels during the week ending February 27, according to new data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) released on Wednesday. The increase brings commercial stockpiles to 439.3 million barrels according to government data, which is still 3% below the five-year average for this time of year.
The EIA’s data release follows API’s figures that were released a day earlier, which reported that crude oil inventories rose by 5.6 million barrels in the period.
Crude prices were trading down on Wednesday morning after significant price rises earlier in the week courtesy of Iraq production outages and supply fears with tanker traffic stalled in the Strait of Hormuz. At 10:54 a.m. in New York, Brent was trading at $81.04 per barrel—down $0.36 (-0.42%) on the day, but up a dramatic $10 per week from this time last week. WTI was also trading down on the day, by $0.37 per barrel (-0.50%) in morning trade at $74.19 per barrel – also up nearly $10 per barrel week over week.
For total motor gasoline, the EIA reported that inventories had decreased by 1.7 million barrels after dipping by 1 million barrels in the week prior. The most recent figures showed average daily gasoline production increased to 9.3 million barrels. For middle distillates, inventories increased by 400,000 barrels with production increasing by 61,000 barrels daily to an average of 4.8 million barrels daily.
Total products supplied—a proxy for U.S. oil demand—slipped to 21.0 million barrels per day over the last four weeks, but still up 4.2% compared to the same period last year. Gasoline demand averaged 8.5 million barrels per day over the last four weeks, while the distillate four-week average supplied averaged 4.2 million barrels—up 4.1% percent year over year.
By Julianne Geiger for Oilprice.com
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