Commercial crude oil inventories Stateside registered a sharp drop in the latest week, alongside a large fall in imports.
Advertisement
Before the EIA report, benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude for October delivery traded up about 1.4% at around $46.15 a barrel and zoomed to around $47.15 shortly after the report’s release.
Benchmark Brent crude oil was up $1.72 a barrel at $49.70 USA late morning Thursday, after settling up 72 cents on Wednesday.
Stockpiles of crude oil and gasoline plunged week, more than offsetting recent increases in inventories and sending oil prices soaring.
This data comes just a day after the America Petroleum Institute reported a 12 million barrel draw in crude inventories. This is the largest weekly decline in crude inventories since April 1985. OPEC’s oil market share has been ticking higher since, as Iran, Iraq and Saudi ramp up their crude exports.
Oil prices jumped Thursday on data showing a massive drop in United States crude stockpiles due largely to the curtailment of imports because of a hurricane.
Earnings per barrel of crude oil and other inputs processed by refiners that operate mainly in North America were lower in the second quarter of 2016 compared with the same time previous year and are now close to per barrel earnings by refiners operating elsewhere, according to data from the US EIA.
USA crude imports fell last week by 1.7 MMbbl/d to 7.3 MMbbl/d.
Tropical Storm Hermine interrupted shipping routes and production last week, even though the storm eventually turned to the northeast and did not harm key facilities in the Gulf.
Iran is targeting 4 million barrels per day, some ~400kbd higher than its current level, while Nigeria is ~450kbd adrift of its production level of 2mn bpd earlier in the year.
Uncertainty remains over the chances that producer nations will agree on an output freeze.
Gasoline stocks fell 2.3 MMbbl, compared with analysts’ expectations in a Reuters poll for a 171,000-bbl decline.
Advertisement
The oil options market indicates traders are not betting big on OPEC and rival Russian Federation clinching a meaningful deal this month to control output.
