On Wednesday, the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported that the country’s crude oil and distillate inventories dropped last week while gasoline stocks built.
In the week to October 16, crude stockpiles slipped by 1 million barrels to 488.1 million barrels, in line with a Reuters poll. Crude output sharply declined to 9.9 million bpd, from 10.5 million bpd mostly on the back of the shutdown in many offshore facilities due to Hurricane Delta.
Overall product supplied went down, still lower by 13% on the year and over the past four weeks when compared with the year-ago period.
Refinery crude runs slumped by 551,000 bpd last week, with utilization rates tumbled by 2.2% to 72.9% of capacity.
Distillate inventories, including diesel and heating oil, nosedived by 3.8 million barrels to 160.7 million barrels. Analysts only forecast a drop of 1.7 million barrels.
Gasoline stocks, on the other hand, soared by 1.9 million barrels, exceeding the expectations for a 1.8 million barrel fall.
On the day, oil prices decelerated as, by 10.54 AM ET (14.54 GMT), Brent crude oil futures dropped by 2.8% to USD41.95/barrel and US WTI slipped by 4% or USD1.30/barrel to USD40.40/barrel.
