U.S. crude inventories down 3.8M barrels last week - API

By Barani Krishnan

Investing.com -- U.S. crude stockpiles likely had their first decline last week after 10 prior weeks of builds, petroleum trade group API said in a report Tuesday that was expected to be matched somewhat by forthcoming government data.

U.S. crude inventories potentially fell by 3.835 million barrels during the week ended March 3, the API, which stands for the American Petroleum Institute, said. Over 10 prior weeks, U.S. crude stockpiles had risen by some 60M barrels.

The inventory drop reported by the API was, however, shallow enough not to impact storage levels at the Cushing, Oklahoma delivery point for U.S. crude. Here, the API reported stockpiles almost unchanged from a week ago, with a build of just 0.024M barrels.

The API inventory report also showed builds in major fuel products gasoline and distillates. There was a 1.84M-barrel build in gasoline stocks for last week and a 1.927M-barrel gain 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 the week ended March 3, analysts tracked by Investing.com expect the EIA to report a crude stockpile gain of 0.395M barrels, versus the 1.165M barrel rise during the week to Feb 24.

On the gasoline inventory front, the consensus is for a decline of 1.863M barrels over the previous drop of 0.874M. Automotive fuel gasoline is the No. 1 U.S. fuel product.

With distillate stockpiles, the expectation is for a drop of 1.038M barrels versus the prior week’s gain of 0.179M. 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.