Foreign news on July 17, a preliminary survey released on Monday showed that US crude oil inventories and refined oil inventories may have fallen last week.
The average estimate of four analysts polled was for U.S. crude inventories to fall by 2.3 million barrels in the week to July 14.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) previously announced that U.S. crude oil inventories rose by 5.9 million barrels to 458.1 million barrels in the week ended July 7. Analysts had expected an increase of 500,000 barrels.
The American Petroleum Institute (API) will release the industry version of the crude oil inventory report at 4:30 Beijing time on Wednesday, and the EIA will release the official version of the inventory report at 22:30 on Wednesday.
Analysts forecast that U.S. gasoline inventories were expected to fall by about 2.1 million barrels last week, while distillate inventories, which include diesel and heating oil, were expected to fall by about 100,000 barrels.
U.S. refinery capacity utilization was expected to rise 0.3 percentage points last week, from 93.7% in the week ended July 7.