According to foreign news on September 27, a report released by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) on Wednesday showed that U.S. crude oil inventories decreased last week, but gasoline and distillate inventories increased.
Data show that in the week as of September 22, U.S. crude oil inventories fell by 2.17 million barrels to 416.3 million barrels, much higher than the market’s previous expectation of a decrease of 320,000 barrels.
Crude oil inventories in Cushing, Oklahoma, fell by 943,000 barrels last week to 21.96 million barrels per day.
EIA said refinery crude oil processing volume decreased by 239,000 barrels per day last week to 16.07 million barrels per day.
Refinery capacity utilization fell 2.4 percentage points to 89.5%.
The data also showed that U.S. gasoline inventories increased by 1.027 million barrels that week to 220.5 million barrels. The market had previously expected a decrease of 120,000 barrels.
Inventories of distillates, including heating oil and diesel, rose by 400,000 barrels to 120.1 million barrels, compared with analysts' expectations for a decrease of 1.3 million barrels.
EIA said U.S. net crude oil imports increased by 1.77 million barrels per day to 3.22 million barrels per day. Refined oil imports decreased by 486,000 barrels per day to 1.4 million barrels per day.
U.S. gasoline production decreased by 572,000 barrels/day to 9.14 million barrels/day that week; distillate production increased by 150,000 barrels/day to 4.93 million barrels/day.
In the past four weeks, total demand for U.S. refined oil products was 20.56 million barrels per day, an increase of 4.2% from the same period last year.