U.S. Oil Inventories Fall as Refineries Restart After Hurricane
September 22 2021 - 11:21AM
Dow Jones News
By Dan Molinski
U.S. oil inventories fell last week and gasoline supplies
climbed as refineries boosted activity following Hurricane
Ida-caused outages, according to data released Wednesday by the
Energy Information Administration.
Benchmark U.S. oil prices that were higher before the
mixed-to-bullish report came out held on to most of those gains
afterward. The Nymex front-month crude contract for November
delivery was recently up 1.5% at $71.56 a barrel.
Crude-oil stockpiles dropped by 3.5 million barrels to 414
million barrels, and are now about 8% below the five-year average,
the EIA said. Analysts surveyed by The Wall Street Journal had
predicted crude stockpiles would fall by 2.4 million barrels from
the prior week.
Oil stored at Cushing, the delivery point for U.S. stocks, fell
by 1.5 million barrels from the previous week, to 33.8 million
barrels, the EIA said in its weekly report.
U.S. crude-oil production rose by 500,000 barrels a day last
week to 10.6 million barrels a day, according to EIA, as offshore
output continued to recover from Ida.
Gasoline stockpiles climbed by 3.5 million barrels to 221.6
million barrels, compared with analysts' expectations for
inventories to decrease by 1 million barrels from the previous
week.
Distillate stocks, which include heating oil and diesel fuel,
fell by 2.6 million barrels to 129.3 million barrels, and are now
about 14% below the five-year average, the EIA said. Analysts were
forecasting a 900,000-barrel decline from the previous week.
The refining capacity utilization rate surged 5.4 percentage
points from the previous week to 87.5% as plants came back online
after Ida-caused power outages. The sharp increase compared with
analysts' forecasts for just a 1.8 percentage-point increase from
the previous week.
U.S. oil inventories for the week ended Sept. 17:
Crude Gasoline Distillates Refinery Use
EIA data: -3.5 +3.5 -2.6 +5.4
Forecast: -2.4 -1.0 -0.9 +1.8
Note: Numbers in millions of barrels, with the exception of
refinery use, which is in percentage points.
Write to Dan Molinski at dan.molinski@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
September 22, 2021 11:06 ET (15:06 GMT)
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