On Wednesday, the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) said that the country’s crude oil inventory rose less than expected while distillate stockpiles soared. However, gasoline inventory went down for the second consecutive week.
For the fifteenth week in a row, crude stockpiles climbed by 4.6 million barrels last week to 532.2 million barrels. Analysts estimated a 7.8 million barrel increase.
In the US Gulf Coast refining and export hub, crude stockpiles jumped by2.3 million barrels to the highest on the record at 282.7 million barrels. In the delivery hub at Cushing, Oklahoma, inventories climbed by 2.1 million to the highest in three years at 65 million barrels.
Gasoline inventories showed 3.2 million barrels in the week ended May 1, missing the analysts’ estimates for a 43,000 barrel increase.
On the contrary, distillate stockpiles skyrocketed far beyond expectation to 9.5 million barrels to 151.5 million barrels. Analysts only expected a 2.9 million barrels increase.
Analyst John Kilduff of Again Capital commented that even when the crude stockpiles gave some support, the distillate build showed the problem in the market, which is the lack of airline traffic and over-the-road truck traffic.
Following the report, oil prices slumped. US crude slid down by 4.4% to USD23.49/barrel while Brent slipped by 3.8% to USD29.78/barrel.
According to the EIA, refinery crude runs stepped up by 215,000 bpd last week, with utilization rate climbed by 0.9% to 70.5% of capacity.
The US crude production for the week went down to the lowest since July last year, by 200,000 bpd to 11.9 million bpd.
