U.S. crude stocks down 2.1M barrels last week, gasoline up 5.2M - API

By Barani Krishnan

Investing.com -- U.S. crude stockpiles fell by more than 2 million barrels last week while fuel products gasoline and distillates saw large builds again, trade group API said Tuesday ahead of official weekly data on the same.

U.S. crude inventories dropped by 2.184M barrels during the week ended Feb. 1, the API, which stands for the American Petroleum Institute, said.

There was, however, a build of 178,000 barrels at the Cushing, Oklahoma delivery point for U.S. crude, the API said.

The trade group’s inventory report also showed a 5.261M-barrel rise in gasoline stocks for last week and a 1.109M-barrel rise 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 smaller crude stockpile build of 2.457M barrels, versus the 4.14M barrel rise reported during the week to Jan. 27.

On the gasoline inventory front, the consensus is for a build of 1.271M barrels over the 2.576M barrel rise during the previous week. Automotive fuel gasoline is the No. 1 U.S. fuel product.

With distillate stockpiles, the expectation is for a climb of 0.097M barrels versus the prior week’s gain of 2.32M barrels. 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.