In the week ended June 23, commercial reserves fell by 9.6 million barrels, while analysts expected a decrease of only 1.5 million barrels.
Commercial crude oil reserves fell sharply last week in the United States, much more than analysts expected, according to figures released on Wednesday by the United States Energy Information Agency (EIA), which has makes the price of black gold jump.
In the week ended June 23, commercial inventories fell by 9.6 million barrels, when analysts had expected a decrease of 1.5 million barrels, according to a consensus compiled by the agency. Bloomberg.
Reserves now stand at 453.7 million barrels.
The US government has also drawn another 1.4 million barrels from the Strategic Petroleum Reserves (SPR), which amount to 348.6 million barrels.
“Between the decline in commercial stocks and that of strategic reserves, 11 million barrels have been used, associated with very good demand for gasoline in the past two weeks, which is helping prices rise,” commented for AFP Andy Lipow, analyst of Lipow Oil Associates.
Crude prices, which were down slightly just before the publication of these EIA figures, then soared, this sharp drop in inventories being favorable to crude prices.
Around 3:40 p.m. GMT, a barrel of Brent from the North Sea, for delivery in August, gained 2.28% to 73.91 dollars.
Its American equivalent, a barrel of West Texas Intermediate (WTI), for delivery the same month, rose 2.50% to 69.39 dollars.
Gasoline demand has risen to more than 9.3 million barrels per day for the past two weeks, “which is a very good number for the start of the car travel season”, which begins with the long July 4 National Day weekend, noted Andy Lipow.
“The demand for gasoline is also growing because the price at the pump is much cheaper than last year,” he added.
Gasoline reserves rose slightly by 600,000 barrels, less than the million barrels forecast by analysts, which was also bullish for prices.
The overall reduction in crude inventories is also explained by a nice increase in crude exports (+795,000 barrels per day, b/d).
At 5.3 million b/d exported, “we are approaching the record”, underlined Mr. Lipow.
The refinery utilization rate stood at 92.2%, down from the previous week (93.1%).
“We have seen a number of problems in the refineries, linked to high temperatures and storms, which led to power cuts and the shutdown of certain installations,” said the analyst.
US crude production remained stable at 12.2 million bpd.
Demand over the week was down slightly by 619,000 b/d compared to the previous week, but up year on year.
On average over four weeks, an indicator closely followed by operators, deliveries of gasoline, kerosene and distilled products increased by 1.3% to 20.2 million b/d, compared to 19.9 million in 2022 at the end of same period.
2023-06-28 16:18:28
#OilUSA #massive #decline #weekly #crude #inventories
