The American Petroleum Institute (API) reported a huge crude oil inventory draw of 8.129 million barrels for the week ending July 4, compared to analyst expectations of a smaller 3.081-million barrel draw.
Last week, the API reported a draw of 5 million barrels. A day later, the EIA estimated a much smaller inventory drawdown of 1.1 million barrels.
The net build is just 13.56 million barrels for the 28-week reporting period so far this year, using API data.
Oil prices were up on Tuesday as the market grows increasingly leery of the mounting tensions in the Middle East that continue to threaten the world's transport of crude.
At 4:01pm EST, WTI was trading up by $0.31 (+0.54%) at $57.97-less than a $1.00 over last week's levels-a surprisingly low rise given the tumultuous times in the Middle East. Brent was trading down $0.17 (+0.27%) at $64.28-up almost $1 over this time last week
The API this week reported a 257,000-barrel draw in gasoline inventories for week ending July 4. Analysts estimated a larger draw in gasoline inventories of 1.301-million barrels for the week.
Distillate inventories grew by 3.690 million barrels for the week, while inventories at Cushing fell by 754,000 barrels.
US crude oil production as estimated by the Energy Information Administration showed that production for the week ending June 28 rose slightly this week to 12.2 million bpd, just 200,000 bpd off the all-time high of 12.4 million bpd.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration report on crude oil inventories is due to be released at its regularly scheduled time on Wednesday at 10:30a.m. EST.
By 4:37pm EST, WTI was trading at $58.05 while Brent traded at $64.34.
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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