U.S. crude oil stocks up 4M Bbls, first climb in 5 weeks; fuels surge too - EIA
Investing.com — U.S. crude oil stockpiles jumped nearly 4 million barrels in the just-ended week, the first surge in five weeks, and fuel inventories rose by as much or more, indicating lower demand as the peak summer driving season drew to a close, the government reported on Wednesday.
The U.S. crude inventory balance rose by 3.955M barrels during the week ended Sept. 8, according to the Weekly Petroleum Status Report of the U.S. Energy Information Administration, or EIA. Analysts tracked by Investing.com had expected a crude drawdown of 2.481M barrels instead for last week to add to the 6.307M deficit in the prior week to Sept. 1.
On the fuels side, the EIA reported a gasoline inventory increase of 5.561M. The forecast consensus had been for a gasoline draw of 0.85M barrels that would have added to the prior week’s decline of 2.666M. Automotive fuel gasoline is the No. 1 U.S. fuel product.
With distillate stockpiles, there was an official build of 3.931M barrels versus the expected gain of 1.4M and the prior week’s rise of 0.679M. Distillates are refined into heating oil, diesel for trucks, buses, trains and ships and fuel for jets.
The growth in both crude and fuel supplies coincided with the official end of the summer driving period in the United States last week, marked by the September 4 Labor Day holiday. Prior to that, refiners had drawn nearly 20 million barrels of crude from inventory over a period of four weeks as they maxed out fuel processing for the summer driving period. Refiners had also maintained an extraordinarily high run rate of more than 93% of their capacity during the period.
As of last week, the EIA said refiners were still running at almost optimum levels, they refined less crude oil for fuel
Read more on investing.com
