• 3 minutes e-car sales collapse
  • 6 minutes America Is Exceptional in Its Political Divide
  • 11 minutes Perovskites, a ‘dirt cheap’ alternative to silicon, just got a lot more efficient
  • 51 mins GREEN NEW DEAL = BLIZZARD OF LIES
  • 7 days If hydrogen is the answer, you're asking the wrong question
  • 19 hours How Far Have We Really Gotten With Alternative Energy
  • 11 days Biden's $2 trillion Plan for Insfrastructure and Jobs

Breaking News:

Oil Prices Gain 2% on Tightening Supply

Oil Inches Higher After API reports Significant Draw To U.S. Crude Inventories

Oil prices inched up on Tuesday in a low volume trading session after the American Petroleum Institute’s (API) weekly report showed a larger than expected draw of 4.15 million barrels to the United States’ commercial crude inventories, instead of an expected 2.5 million-barrel draw.

The build comes after last week’s report from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) that showed a drop of 2.6 million barrels of crude oil in inventories the week prior.

Gasoline inventories have seen builds over the past six weeks as the winter season has now started and demand for road fuels is in decline. API however has Gasoline inventories falling this week by 1.96 million barrels.

Crude levels at the Cushing, Oklahoma once again increased, and while analysts expected a somewhat significant 1.9 million barrels to be added, according to API, only 690,000 barrels were added. Crude storage levels at this key site have been rising rapidly since October, and this week’s report confirms the 4th weekly build according to Zerohedge.

Lastly, API data sees a bullish 1.55 million barrel draw to distillate inventories.

Figure 1: EIA data shows a spike in Cushing inventories

Today’s API projections are expected to be confirmed by tomorrow’s EIA data. Markets got slightly more optimistic about OPEC’s compliance to the output cut deal over the course of the week, and this has caused oil prices to rise in the last three trading sessions.

Related: Traders Most Bullish On Oil Since 2014

The outlook however for U.S. crude inventories could prove to be slightly bearish in the near term. According to Research Director Matt Smith at Clipperdata, just under 25 million barrels of crude oil are sitting offshore in the Gulf of Mexico after stormy weather conditions slowed imports two weeks ago.

According to Smith, ad valorem tax strategizing could be another reason for the growing number of barrels stored in the Gulf of Mexico.

The price of WTI was up 0.19% to $52.22 at 4:15 PM CST, while Brent traded 1.11% higher at $55.53. Gasoline prices were up 2.20% to $1.6179.

ADVERTISEMENT

By Tom Kool of Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:



Join the discussion | Back to homepage



Leave a comment
  • K on December 29 2016 said:
    US domestic use is among the highest in the world and the amount consumed nationally, has a direct and heavy correlation on the amount imported from the rest of the world. (So a big effect.)
  • ben on December 23 2016 said:
    U.S. exports less than 70K bpd of crude compared to some 90M bpd worldwide and has next to zero effect on the world market.

Leave a comment

EXXON Mobil -0.35
Open57.81 Trading Vol.6.96M Previous Vol.241.7B
BUY 57.15
Sell 57.00
Oilprice - The No. 1 Source for Oil & Energy News