The EIA weekly report was released at 23:30 in the evening. The data showed that commercial Crude Oil inventories excluding strategic reserves increased by 21.563 million barrels, or 4.7%, to 484.6 million barrels, compared to expectations for a decrease of 928,000 barrels. The increase in U.S. EIA crude oil inventories was the largest on record.
After the release of the data, the U.S. and cloth oil once sharp setback, followed by a short storm pull, WTI crude oil than the EIA data after the release of the lowest point back up more than $1, now reported 61.18 U.S. dollars / barrel, up more than 3% during the day. nymex most active month WTI crude oil futures contract at 23:30 GMT on March 3 within a minute of buying and selling plate instantly traded 7170 lots, the total value of trading contracts more than 430 The total value of the contracts traded was over $430 million. Brent crude oil also rose over 3% shortly afterwards.
Let’s take a look at the specific data below.
On the production front, U.S. domestic crude oil production increased by 300,000 barrels last week to 10 million barrels per day. The four-week average supply of U.S. crude oil products was 19.574 million barrels per day, down 4.2% from a year ago.
On the import and export side, commercial crude oil imports excluding strategic reserves increased by 6.292 million barrels per day last week, up 1.693 million barrels per day from the previous week; U.S. crude oil exports increased by 37,000 barrels per day to 2.351 million barrels per day last week.
In other refined products data, distillate stocks, including diesel and heating oil, fell by 9.7 million barrels this week to 143 million barrels, compared with market expectations for a 3 million barrel decline. U.S. EIA gasoline stocks fell the most since 1990, and U.S. EIA refined oil stocks fell at a record high.
In addition, the EIA reported that the U.S. Gulf Coast refinery utilization rate fell to 40.9% last week, the lowest level on record.
The financial blog Zero Hedge commented that the official data from the U.S. Department of Energy came as a shock after the data from the American Petroleum Institute (API).
This data reflects the impact of the severe Texas cold on the U.S. crude oil industry. The previous week, U.S. crude oil production plummeted and gasoline demand plummeted due to storms in Texas; last week U.S. crude oil production recovered very modestly, while gasoline demand rebounded even more, as we know from the plummeting refined oil inventory data. However, it is important to note that at least 15 refineries remained on an ongoing shutdown last week, with a total capacity of 4.2 million barrels per day.
As a result, the rise in international oil prices seems to reflect more of the market’s surprise at the change in gasoline demand in the EIA report, which did not prevent crude oil from moving higher despite the big increase recorded in total crude oil inventories.
Looking ahead, investors can keep an eye on the OPEC+ ministerial meeting scheduled for 21:00 tomorrow, where the market is widely expected to agree to increase production this week, cooling the rapid rise in crude oil prices. However, whether to increase production remains fraught with uncertainty, with sources saying several OPEC+ members support the idea of keeping production unchanged in April.
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