U.S. Crude Oil Inventories Continue to Fall

Crude oil inventories in the United States fell again this week, this time by 3.9 million barrels for the week ending July 19, according to The American Petroleum Institute (API). The reality was a far cry from analyst predictions which pegged the inventory move at a 700,000-barrel build for the week.

For the week prior, the API reported a 4.44 million barrel draw in crude inventories.

This week marks the fourth week in a row of API-estimated inventory draws for crude oil, for a total loss of  19.4 million barrels during that time.

On Monday, the Department of Energy (DoE) reported that crude oil inventories in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) rose by 0.7 million barrels as of July 19. Inventories are now at 374.4 million barrels—the highest level since December 2022, but still well below the 656 million barrels in inventory in June 2020.

Oil prices were trading substantially down ahead of the API data release on Tuesday. At 03:37 pm ET, Brent crude was trading down $0.98 (-1.19%) on the day at $81.42—down about $2.40 per barrel from this time last week. The U.S. benchmark WTI was also trading down on the day by $1.04 (-1.33%) at $77.36—down roughly $3.40 per barrel from this time last week.

Gasoline inventories also fell this week, by 2.8 million barrels, more than offsetting last week’s 365,000-barrel increase. As of last week, gasoline inventories are slightly above the five-year average for this time of year, according to the latest EIA data.

Distillate inventories shrunk this week by 1.5 million barrels, compared to last week’s 4.92-million-barrel increase. Distillates were about 7% below the five-year average for the week ending May July 12, the latest EIA data shows.

Cushing inventories rounded out this week’s losses, losing 1.6 million barrels, according to API data, on to pof the 746,000 barrel drop in the previous week.

By Julianne Geiger for Oilprice.com

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