U.S. crude inventories up 16.3M barrels, fourth largest build ever

By Barani Krishnan

Investing.com -- U.S. crude stockpiles rose for an eighth straight week last week and almost 10 times more than forecast, government data showed.

U.S. crude inventories rose by 16.283 million barrels during the week ended Feb. 10, the Energy Information Administration, or EIA, said in its Weekly Petroleum Status Report.

U.S. commercial crude inventories have risen 50.75M barrels so far this year.

The climb came as most U.S. refineries entered seasonal maintenance that foresaw less processing of crude.

U.S. crude oil refinery inputs averaged 15.0M barrels per day during the week ending February 10, which was 383,000 barrels per day less than the previous week’s average, the EIA said.

Refineries operated at 86.5% of their operable capacity last week, the agency added. Typically, inventory runs at this time of the year are about 90% or more.

Last week’s crude build was the fourth-largest ever in the history of the EIA’s reporting, data showed. It was also the third largest in eight straight weeks of builds.

Industry analysts tracked by Investing.com had forecast a build of just 1.166M for the week.

“That's a gigantic build,” analyst Adam Button said on the ForexLive platform. “It's not entirely shocking as the API data late yesterday also showed a large build, but not that large.”

Trade group API, or the American Petroleum Institute, using its own data, reported a crude build of 10.507M barrels for the week ended Feb. 10.

Besides crude, the EIA also reported a build in stockpiles of gasoline while noting a dip in distillate inventories.

On the gasoline inventory front, the EIA reported a build of 2.317M, versus the forecast rise of 1.543M and adding to the previous week's rise of 5.008M. Gasoline inventories have gone up by more than 19M barrels since 2023 began. Automotive fuel gasoline is the No. 1 U.S. fuel product.

The EIA said U.S. gasoline demand over the past four weeks slipped by 3.2% from a year ago, to 8.334M barrels per day.

Distillate stockpiles resumed their drop last week after rising in the previous week for the first time in five weeks. Distillate stockpiles fell by 1.285M versus the expected build of 0.447M. In the previous week, the distillate build was 2.932M.