U.S. crude oil production dropped by 1.9 percent to 8.580 million barrels per day (bpd) in September from 8.747 million bpd in August, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) said in its monthly crude oil and natural gas production report on Wednesday.
Last year in September, U.S. crude oil output stood at 9.423 million bpd.
This year in September, production in Texas inched up by 0.2 percent from August, to 3.163 million bpd, but was 7.4 percent lower than the September 2015 figure of 3.415 million bpd.
Crude output in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico went down by 8.4 percent on the month in September, to 1.507 million bpd, while output in North Dakota fell 1.3 percent to 962,000.
U.S. natural gas gross withdrawals totaled 88.137 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) in September, down by 0.4 percent from August, and down 3 percent from September last year. Gas output in Texas fell by 1.2 percent monthly to 21.805 billion Bcf/d this past September.
As for weekly inventories, EIA reported on Wednesday a decline in U.S. commercial crude oil inventories of less than a million barrels: stockpiles were down 900,000 barrels in the week to November 25. This brought the total to 488.1 million barrels, within the average for this time of year, though close to the upper limit.
Gasoline inventories, according to EIA, were up by 2.1 million barrels, above the upper limit for the week, with production at 10 million barrels per day. Refineries operated at 89.8 percent of capacity, processing 16.3 million barrels of crude, and producing also 5.2 million barrels of distillate.
The previous day the American Petroleum Institute estimated total commercial oil inventories had fallen by a modest 717,000 barrels, with strategic stockpiles at Cushing up by 2.3 million barrels - the highest weekly build since March 2015.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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