Looking forward, the EIA has announced that starting October 13, it won’t include the oil lease stocks in the U.S.in its commercial inventory weekly report, which means some 31 million barrels will be deducted from every weekly total.
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Oil prices were up as much as 2 percent on Wednesday after a surprise drop in crude stockpiles reported by the USA government for a third week in a row.
Brent crude futures LCOc1 were at $46.53 per barrel, up 65 cents, or 1.42 percent, from their last close, supported by an oil service worker strike in Norway that hit output in western Europe’s biggest crude producer. “Should they (EIA) follow the unexpected drawdown like the API and we get no FOMC rate hike, oil bulls may well have reason to be cheering after a tough couple of weeks”, said Singapore-based brokerage Oanda. Adding to the volatility was data out on Wednesday showing a surprise reduction in US crude oil inventories. Gasoline stockpiles declined by 3.2 million barrels.
Official storage data is due to be published by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) later on Wednesday, and traders said they were also eagerly anticipating a meeting by the U.S. Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), which might influence U.S. interest rates.
Crude stocks in the United States, the world’s largest oil consumer, have fallen since 14.5 million barrels were drawn in the week to September 2, the biggest weekly drop since 1999 after a storm disrupted imports to the U.S. Gulf Coast. With this week’s decline, US crude oil inventories are still 177 million barrels above their historical average dating back to 1984.
Non-OPEC members have also been raising production, with Russian Federation achieving record highs of above 11 million barrels per day.
Oil prices gained Wednesday after preliminary data showed a fall in USA crude inventories and there was speculation about an output deal between major producers as investors waited for the conclusion of the Federal Reserve’s policy meeting.
Brent crude futures settled up 95 U.S. cents, or 2 per cent, at $US46.83 per barrel.
Some market participants were puzzled by the US crude draw when imports as a whole rose and refinery runs fell.
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The draw in gasoline came after an outage on Colonial Pipeline’s key gasoline duct that ran from the refining hub in the south to northeast. “We will have to see if the trends normalize next week”, said John Kilduff, partner at NY energy hedge fund Again Capital in NY.
