The American Petroleum Institute (API) reported a surprise oil inventory build of 38,000 barrels of United States crude oil inventories for the week ending August 25, compared to analyst expectations that this week would see a draw in crude oil inventories of 522,000 barrels.
Last week, the American Petroleum Institute (API) reported a surprise draw of 5.17 million barrels of crude oil.
The API also reported a build in gasoline inventories for week ending August 25 in the amount of 21,000 barrels. Analysts predicted a much larger build of 370,000 barrels.
Oil prices were trading down in mid-afternoon trading prior to the release of the API data on inventories. At 2:07pm EDT, WTI was trading down 0.62% (-$0.43) at $68.44 per barrel, with Brent crude trading down 0.31% (-$0.24) at $76.26 per barrel, on news late yesterday from OPEC that it had eased oil production cuts in July, complying with the production cut deal at just 109% in July after a strong 120% in June and 147% in May, and then wavering as news came in that the United States and Mexico had reached a tentative deal to redraw the trade deal between the two nations.
While down on the day, oil prices have made significant gains for the week, reaching multi-week highs.
US crude oil production as estimated by the Energy Information Administration once again reached 11.0 million bpd for the week ending August 17, after dipping slightly to 10.8 million bpd earlier in August.
Distillate inventories were up this week-by 982,000 barrels, compared to an expected build of 1.592 million barrels. Inventories at the Cushing, Oklahoma site increased this week by 130,000 barrels.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration report on crude oil inventories is due to be released on Wednesday at 10:30a.m. EDT.
By 4:42pm EDT, WTI was trading at $68.67 and Brent was trading at $76.40.
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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