Oil Prices Fall On Another Major Crude Inventory Build

Crude oil inventories saw another substantial rise this week, with a 9.895 million barrel increase last week, the American Petroleum Institute (API) data showed on Tuesday.

This week, SPR inventory held steady for the sixth week in a row at 371.6 million barrels—the lowest amount of crude oil in the SPR since December 1983. But the Biden Administration recently announced that there would be further releases from the SPR in the amount of 26 million barrels, after the stockpiles dropped by 221 million barrels last week.

Oil prices traded down on Tuesday in the run-up to the data release. At 3:32 p.m. EST, WTI was trading down $0.29 (-0.38%) on the day to $76.05 $79.15 per barrel, and down nearly $3 per barrel from this time last week. Brent crude was trading down $1.06 (-1.26%) on the day at $83.01—a weekly decrease of about $2.50 per barrel.

U.S. crude oil production stayed at 12.3 million bpd for week ending February 10—the highest production rate since last April 2020. U.S. production is still 800,000 bpd lower than the peak production seen in March 2020.

WTI was trading at $73.91 shortly after the data release.

Gasoline inventories rose by 894,000 barrels after last week’s API data showed the fuel inventories rising by 846,000 barrels. Distillates rose 1.374 million barrels after rising by 1.728 million bpd in the week prior.

Inventories at Cushing, Oklahoma, increased by 781,000 barrels on top of the 1.954 million barrel hike reported last week.

By Julianne Geiger for Oilprice.com

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