Crude Oil Inventories Dip Again

Crude oil inventories in the United States fell by another 2.79 million barrels for the week ending September 6, according to The American Petroleum Institute (API). Analysts had expected a 700,000-barrel build.

For the week prior, the API reported a 7.4-million-barrel decrease in crude inventories.

So far this year, crude oil inventories are more than 12 million barrels under where they were at the start of the year, according to API data.

On Tuesday, the Department of Energy (DoE) reported that crude oil inventories in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) rose by another 0.3 million barrels as of Sept 6. Inventories are now at 380 million barrels. The SPR is now up 33 million from its multi-decade low last summer, although still down 255 million from when President Biden took office.

Oil prices continued their decline on Wednesday ahead of the API data release. At 3:50 pm ET, Brent crude was trading down another $2.31 (-3.22%) on the day at $69.53—a nearly $3 haircut from this time last week. The U.S. benchmark WTI was also trading down on the day by $2.58 (-3.75%) at $66.13—down nearly $3 per barrel from last Tuesday.

Gasoline inventories also fell this week, by 513,000 barrels, on top of last week’s 300,000-barrel decrease. As of last week, gasoline inventories are 2% below the five-year average for this time of year, according to the latest EIA data.

Distillate inventories rose by 191,000 barrels, partially counteracting last week’s 400,000-barrel decrease. Distillates were already about 10% below the five-year average for the week ending August 30, the latest EIA data shows.

Cushing inventories saw another large draw, with a loss of 2.6 million barrels, according to API data, compared to the 800,000-barrel draw from the previous week.

By Julianne Geiger for Oilprice.com

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