The American Petroleum Institute (API) reported a draw of 1.562 million barrels in United States crude oil inventories, against an S&P Platts' survey of analysts that expected inventories would draw down by 2.7 million barrels for the week ending November 3-continuing the drawdown that the market has seen in recent weeks.
Gasoline inventories, according to the API, saw a small build of 520,000 barrels for the week ending November 3, against an expectation of a draw of 2.25 million barrels.
Both WTI and Brent benchmarks were down earlier on Tuesday, but still near two-year highs as the market shows increasing faith that OPEC will be able to rebalance the oil market by extending the current production cut deal until the end of 2018. Disruptions in Iraq and Libya, as well as surprise arrests in Saudi Arabia-including of an Aramco board member-also lent a helping hand to support prices.
Crude oil inventories have drawn down a total of 36.8 million barrels since the start of 2017, according to API data.
The WTI benchmark was down .23 percent on the day to $57.22 at 1:28pm EST-almost $2.00 per barrel over last week's levels. Brent was trading down 0.75 percent on the day at $63.79.
Gasoline was trading down 0.23 percent at $1.813-almost 10 cents above last week.
Distillate inventories saw a decline this week, down 3.133 million barrels. Analysts had expected a drop of 1.85 million barrels.
Related: Can Oil Prices Hit $65 This Week?
Inventories at the Cushing, Oklahoma, site increased by 812,000 barrels this week.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration report on oil inventories is due to be released on Wednesday at 10:30 a.m. EDT.
WTI was trading relatively unchanged after the data release at $57.22 at 4:36pm EST, with Brent crude trading at $63.73.
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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