August 23, 2017 – 24/7 Wall St.
Crude Oil Price Bounces Higher as Inventory Dips
By Paul Ausick
The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) released its weekly petroleum status report Wednesday morning, showing that U.S. commercial crude inventories dropped by 3.3 million barrels last week, maintaining a total U.S. commercial crude inventory of 463.2 million barrels. The commercial crude inventory remained in the upper half of the average range for this time of year.
Tuesday evening the American Petroleum Institute (API) reported that crude inventories dropped by 3.5 million barrels in the week ending August 18. API also reported gasoline supplies added 1.4 million barrels and distillate inventories rose by 2.1 million barrels. For the same period, an S&P Platts Global survey of analysts had consensus estimates for a decrease of 3.7 million barrels in crude inventories, a decrease of 1.3 million barrels in gasoline inventories and a drop of 500,000 barrels in distillate stockpiles.
Total gasoline inventories decreased by 1.2 million barrels last week, according to the EIA, and remain near the upper limit of the five-year average range. U.S. refineries produced about 10.6 million barrels of gasoline a day last week, up by about 600,000 barrels a day compared to the prior week. Total motor gasoline supplied (the agency’s proxy for demand) averaged 9.7 million barrels a day for the past four weeks, down by 0.4% compared with the same period a year ago.
From December highs of around $53 a barrel, benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil prices have fallen about 12%, but that has not had a chilling effect on the amount that U.S. production companies plan to spend on drilling and completion services this year. In 2016, exploration and production capital spending totaled $39 billion among companies tracked by RBN Energy.
Read the full article here: http://247wallst.com/energy-economy/2017/08/23/crude-oil-price-bounces-higher-as-inventory-dips/
