Commercial crude oil reserves fell unexpectedly sharply last week in the United States, according to figures released Wednesday by the US Energy Information Agency (EIA), notably due to a decrease in imports.
During the week ended May 19, commercial inventories fell by 12.5 million barrels, while analysts saw them increase by two million barrels, according to a consensus established by the Bloomberg agency.
This is the biggest weekly drop since November.
The surprise figure gave a boost to the price of black gold, already on the rise. Around 2:55 p.m. GMT, the price of a barrel of American West Texas Intermediate (WTI) for delivery in July gained 1.93%, to 74.32 dollars.
This contraction is all the more remarkable since, at the same time, American strategic reserves fell by 1.6 million barrels.
The decline in commercial stocks is partly explained by the slowdown in imports (-15%), which were 7 million barrels lower compared to the previous period, while at the same time exports accelerated (+5%).
As for the utilization rate of American refineries, it experienced a slight dip, to 91.7%, against 92.0% the previous week.
US crude production rose moderately to 12.3 million barrels per day from 12.2 the previous week.
Demand has rebounded (+6%). At 20.7 million barrels per day, deliveries of refined products reached their highest level since the end of December.
All major categories increased, notably gasoline (+6%), but also distilled products (+14%), including diesel, at its highest for almost two months.
On average over four weeks, an indicator closely followed by operators, deliveries of petrol, kerosene and distilled products are higher than those of last year at the same time.
2023-05-24 15:04:20
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