The American Petroleum Institute (API) reported a small draw in crude oil inventory of 812,000 barrels for the week ending June 13, but still coming in over analyst expectations of a much bigger 2.033-million barrel drawdown in inventories.
Last week, the API reported a surprise build of 4.852 million barrels. A day later, the EIA estimated that US inventories had built more modestly, by 2.2 million barrels.
The net build is still an uncomfortable 34.02 million barrels for the 25-week reporting period so far this year, using API data.
Oil prices were on a steep upward climb earlier on Tuesday as the market finds new optimism about the US/China trade war after President Donald Trump announced he would meet his Chinese counterpart net week to discuss the stalled negotiations.
At 11:33pm EST, WTI was trading up by $2.16 (+4.16%) at $54.09-roughly $.70 over last week's levels. Brent was trading up $1.68 (+2.76%) to $62.62-about $0.30 more than last week's figures.
The API this week reported a build in gasoline inventories for week ending June 13 in the amount 1.46 million barrels. Analysts estimated a build in gasoline inventories of 1.067 million barrels for the week.
Distillate inventories fell by 50,000 barrels for the week, while inventories at Cushing rose by 520,000 barrels.
US crude oil production as estimated by the Energy Information Administration showed that production for the week ending June 7 fell slightly to 12.3 million bpd, a hair shy of the all-time high of 12.4 million barrels per day.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration report on crude oil inventories is due to be released on Wednesday at 10:30a.m. EST.
By 4:45pm EST, WTI was trading up at $54.05 and Brent was trading up at $62.27
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