Oil prices fell almost 5 per cent on Thursday after a government report on fuel stocks reinforced worries about an oil glut.
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“Just about everything points to lower prices”, Stephen Schork, president of the consulting company Schork Group Inc., told Bloomberg “At this time of year it’s all about gasoline, not crude, and supplies remain close to record highs even though demand is very strong”. U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude was trading at $46.31 U.S. per barrel, down $1.12, or 2.4%.
The Energy Information Administration said Thursday that inventories fell by 2.2 million barrels to 524.4 million barrels last week.
Gasoline stockpiles also declined by less than Platts expected.
The number of active oil rigs in the USA rose by 11 to 341 last week, Baker Hughes Inc. data show. Gasoline stockpiles fell by 100,000 barrels, missing the 350,000 forecast.
In general, the more important official oil data came in below bullish industry figures released by the American Petroleum Institute after markets closed on Wednesday. “Today we had a much more temperate report from DoE”, said Mike Dragosits of TD Securities.
“Refining margins were down sharply in all regions over the last week and gasoline cracks went into free fall”, U.S. investment bank Jefferies said on Friday.
United States crude production fell by 0.25% over the week to 8.428mn bpd from 8.62mn previously, maintaining the run of cuts as shale output continues to fall.
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Producers pumped out 8.43 million barrels per day, 194,000 less than the prior week. Distillate product supplied averaged over 3.9 million barrels a day over the past four weeks, up by 1.5% when compared with the same period a year ago.
