For the week ended May 8, US crude oil inventories unexpectedly fell for the first time since January.
According to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), crude inventories dropped by 745,000 barrels last week, the first time in 15 weeks. Analysts in a Reuters poll expected 4.1 million barrels of increase instead.
Stocks in the Cushing hub in Oklahoma dropped by 3 million barrels in the period. It is also more than 80% full this week.
The drawdown was partly due to imports falling to a record low, combined with the fall in US output. Crude output fell to the lowest since December 2018, by 300,000 bpd to 11.6 million bpd, and net crude imports went down by 300,000 bpd to 1.9 million bpd or the lowest in history.
Refinery crude runs plunged by 593,000 bpd while the utilization rates slid don by 2.6% to 67.9% of total capacity.
The country’s gasoline stocks edged down by 3.5 million barrels to 252.9 million barrels, further than analysts’ expectation for only a 2.2 million barrel fall. In recent weeks, gasoline inventories have decreased on the back of weakening refining activity. However, the rate remains near the top of the five-year range.
On the contrary, distillate stockpiles soared by 3.5 million barrels last week to 155 million barrels. The increase was beyond the 2.9 million barrels increase estimated by analysts.
Since mid-January, US crude inventories have jumped by more than 100 million barrels and in March it soared significantly as the coronavirus outbreak intensified and Saudi Arabia got into a brief price war with Rusia.
