During the week ended June 9, commercial inventories increased by 7.9 million barrels, while analysts expected a decline of 1.5 million barrels, according to a consensus established by the Bloomberg agency. (Photo: Getty Images)
New York — Commercial crude oil reserves rose sharply last week in the United States, according to figures released Wednesday by the United States Energy Information Agency (EIA), misleading data due to to a statistical adjustment.
During the week ended June 9, commercial inventories increased by 7.9 million barrels, while analysts expected a decline of 1.5 million barrels, according to a consensus established by the Bloomberg agency.
This unexpected figure caused a decline in prices, up sharply until then, but they nevertheless remained in the green.
Around 11:15 a.m., a barrel of American West Texas Intermediate (WTI) for delivery in July took 0.24% to 69.59 dollars.
The sharp rise in commercial stocks is attributable to a further drop in strategic reserves (-1.9 million barrels), but above all to a statistical adjustment, which led the EIA to add 13.5 million barrels to the volumes arriving on the US market in the past week alone.
The operation is, most often, a way for the agency to rectify statistical approximations noted in the publications of the previous weeks, but disturbs the readability of the weekly figures.
For Matt Smith of Kpler, the EIA “underestimated production and overestimated crude exports, but also, potentially, refinery activity”.
During the week of June 9, the refinery utilization rate also fell, to 93.7% against 95.8% previously.
The jump in stocks appears all the more like an anomaly since, over the same period, deliveries of refined products, indicators of American demand, accelerated (+6.7%) over one week.
On average over four weeks, data favored by analysts, it is above its level of last year at the same time (+3.5%).
Another element that could have justified a drop in stocks, black gold exports rose by 32%, while imports remained stable (-0.2%).
On the supply side, production remained unchanged at 12.4 million barrels per day, the highest since the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
2023-06-14 21:26:56
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