The American Petroleum Institute (API) on Tuesday reported a decline in crude oil inventories of 4.785 million barrels for the week ending Dec. 25.
Analysts had predicted a stock draw of 2,100 million barrels for the week.
Last week, the API reported that oil supplies had built in 2.70 million barrels, after analysts forecast a draw of 3.135 million barrels.
Both Brent and WTI had stood up Tuesday morning before the release of the data in hopes of a bigger round of stimulus checks signed by President Donald Trump and Parliament on Monday. However, profits are still limited by OPEC’s plans to gradually increase oil production after the start of the year, despite blockages and reduced demand.
Moments before the release of Tuesday’s data, WTI was up $ 0.41 (+ 0.86%) to $ 48.03, up from $ 0.80 a barrel this week. The Brent crude oil benchmark at the time was up $ 0.44 (+ 0.87%) to $ 51.30 – up from about $ 1 a barrel this week.
According to the Energy Information Administration, US oil production was stable at 11.0 million bps for the week ending December 18, 2.1 million bps lower than its all-time high of 13.1 million bps reached in March.
The API reported a decrease in gasoline supplies of 718,000 barrels of gasoline for the week ending December 25 – compared to the decrease of 224,000 barrels in the previous week. Analysts had expected an increase of 1.778 million barrels for the week.
Distillate inventories fell 1.877 million barrels this week, compared to the 1.03 million barrels increase last week, while Cushing’s inventories increased 131,000 barrels this week.
At 4:36 p.m. EDT, the WTI benchmark was trading at $ 47.99, while Brent oil was trading at $ 51.07.
By Julianne Geiger for Oilprice.com
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