The American Petroleum Institute (API) reported a large draw of 5.121 million barrels of United States crude oil inventories for the week ending January 12, marking seven large draws in seven weeks, according to the API data. Analysts had expected a drawdown of 3.588 million barrels in crude oil inventories.
Last week, the American Petroleum Institute (API) reported a huge draw of 11.19 million barrels of crude oil, along with an increase in gasoline inventories of 4.338 million barrels.
This week, the API is reporting another, although smaller, build in gasoline inventories of 1.782 million barrels for the week ending January 12. Analysts had expected a larger 3.596-million-barrel build.
WTI and Brent fell from their three-year highs on Tuesday, a day before the data, on the expectation that crude oil inventories would decline yet another week. Oil prices had remained mostly unchanged on Wednesday, with WTI trading slightly up 0.06% (+$.04) at $63.77 at 11:41am EST. The Brent benchmark was trading up exactly the same .06% (+$.04) at $69.19.
Distillate inventories saw a build this week of 609,000 barrels, largely in line with a forecast for a 750,000-barrel decline.
Inventories at the Cushing, Oklahoma, site decreased by 3.936 million barrels this week.
The continued drop in US crude oil inventories corresponded to a decline in US production for the week ending January 5, coming in at 9.492 million bpd compared to the week prior of 9.782 million bpd.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration report on oil inventories is due to be released on Thursday at 11:00 a.m. EDT on a one-day delay due to the holiday this week.
By 4:37pm EST, the WTI benchmark was trading up 0.27% on the day to $63.90 while Brent was trading up 0.19% on the day at $69.28.
By Julianne Geiger for Oilprice.com
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Julianne Geiger is a veteran editor, writer and researcher for Oilprice.com, and a member of the Creative Professionals Networking Group. More
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