U.S. crude stocks up 1.155M barrels last week, fuel balances drop big - API

By Barani Krishnan

Investing.com -- U.S. crude stockpiles resumed their climb last week after a one-week decline, while inventories of fuel products extended declines sharply, petroleum industry group API said in a report Tuesday that is likely to be matched to some extent by forthcoming government data.

U.S. crude inventories rose by 1.155 million barrels during the week ended March 10, the API, which stands for the American Petroleum Institute, said. U.S. crude stockpiles had risen 10 weeks in a row, before a 3.835M barrel decline reported last week by the API.

Storage levels at the Cushing, Oklahoma delivery point for U.S. crude, meanwhile, fell last week. Here, the API reported a decline of 0.946M barrels.

The API inventory report also showed sharp weekly declines in inventories of major fuel products gasoline and distillates. There was a 4.587M-barrel draw in gasoline stocks for last week and a 2.866M-barrel slide in distillate stockpiles.

The API numbers serve as a precursor to official inventory data on the same due from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, or EIA, on Wednesday.

For last week, analysts tracked by Investing.com expect the EIA to report a crude stockpile build of 1.188M barrels, versus the 1.694M barrel reduction reported during the week to March 3.

On the gasoline inventory front, the consensus is for a draw of 1.820M barrels that would add to the 1.134M barrel decline in the previous week. Automotive fuel gasoline is the No. 1 U.S. fuel product.

With distillate stockpiles, the expectation is for a drop of 1.172M barrels versus the prior week’s gain of 0.138M. Distillates, which are refined into heating oil, diesel for trucks, buses, trains and ships and fuel for jets, have been the strongest component of the U.S. petroleum complex in terms of demand.