On Wednesday, the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) said that last week, the crude stockpiles at the Cushing, Oklahoma, storage hub plunged to the lowest level since January 2020.
At the hub, crude inventories fell to 34.9 million barrels.
Meanwhile, the crude stockpiles at Midwest dropped to the lowest level since October 2018 at 118.3 million barrels.
In the week ended July 30, the US total crude inventories jumped by 3.6 million barrels to 439.2 million barrels, outperforming predictions for a 3.1 million barrels fall.
Gasoline stocks dipped by 5.3 million barrels, way steeper compared to the expectations for a 1.8 million barrel drop.
As the US demand for fuel seemed to be weathering the increase in coronavirus infections, the overall product supplied was still high. It rose to 20.5 million bpd over the past four weeks, comparable to levels seen prior to the pandemic.
For analysts, this means that the US product demand is majorly unaffected by the concerns regarding the delta variant of the coronavirus. They would have to see if the increased infection rate globally and inside the US would affect refining activity or fuel demand.
Distillate inventories’ expansions of 833,000 barrels last week also exceeded expectations for a 543,000 barrel drop.
The US refinery crude runs edged up by 45,000 bpd, while refinery utilization rates inched up by 0.2%. The country’s net crude imports climbed by 510,000 bpd last week.
Wednesday’s oil prices were down, a tad affected by the news of the stock but then gained to pre-report levels. By 10.52 AM EDT (14.52 GMT), US crude dipped by 2.1% or USD1.47 to USD69.09/barrel and Brent lost 1.6% to USD71.22/barrel.
