Energy

Crude Oil Price Jumps on Drawdown of 3.6 Million Barrels

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The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) released its weekly petroleum status report Wednesday morning. U.S. commercial crude inventories decreased by 3.6 million barrels last week, maintaining a total U.S. commercial crude inventory of 485.9 million barrels. The commercial crude inventory remains near levels not seen at this time of year in at least the past 80 years.

Tuesday evening, the American Petroleum Institute (API) reported that crude inventories fell by 1.9 million barrels in the week ending December 4. For the same period, analysts had estimated a decrease of 1.2 barrels in crude inventories.

Total gasoline inventories increased by 800,000 barrels last week, according to the EIA, and have moved into the upper half of the five-year average range. Total motor gasoline supplied (the agency’s measure of consumption) averaged about 9.2 million barrels a day for the past four weeks, up by 0.7% compared with the same period a year ago.

Last week’s OPEC meeting did not result in the hoped-for announcement that the cartel would rein in production. That put downward pressure on prices and pushed the price for benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI) below $37 briefly on Tuesday. Watch the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) weekly Commitment of Traders report that comes out late Friday afternoon to see what impact OPEC’s inaction had on trading. We’re guessing that short positions rose significantly.

In its monthly revision to the Short-Term Energy Outlook released Tuesday, the EIA estimated that November production of crude oil fell by 60,000 barrels a day month-over-month in November. The agency also said it expects production to decline through the end of the third quarter of 2016 before growth returns. For 2015 the EIA predicts average daily production of 9.3 million barrels a day falling to 8.8 million barrels a day in 2016.

Before the EIA report, WTI crude for January delivery traded up about 2.3% at around $38.40 a barrel. The WTI price bounced higher to around $38.80 immediately after the report’s release. The 52-week range on WTI futures is $36.64 to $66.02.

Distillate inventories increased by 5 million barrels last week and remain in the upper half of the average range for this time of year. Distillate product supplied averaged 3.7 million barrels a day over the past four weeks, down by 1.2% when compared with the same period last year. Distillate production averaged over 5.2 million barrels a day last week, roughly flat compared with the prior week’s production.

For the past week, crude imports averaged over 8 million barrels a day, up about 274,000 barrels a day compared with the previous week. Refineries were running at 93.1% of capacity, with daily input of averaging 16.7 million barrels, about 151,000 barrels a day below the previous week’s average.

According to AAA, the current national average pump price per gallon of regular gasoline is $2.019, down nearly 1% from $2.038 a week ago and from $2.215 a month ago. Last year at this time, a gallon of regular gasoline cost $2.655 on average in the United States.


Here is a look at how share prices for two blue-chip stocks and two exchange traded funds reacted to this latest report.

Exxon Mobil Corp. (NYSE: XOM) traded up about 3%, at $76.87 in a 52-week range of $66.55 to $95.18. Year to date, Exxon stock traded down about 17%, and it is down about 20.5% since early November of 2014, as of Tuesday’s close.

Chevron Corp. (NYSE: CVX) traded up about 4.1%, at $90.00 in a 52-week range of $69.58 to $114.45. As of Tuesday’s close, Chevron shares have dropped about 20% year to date and traded down about 25% since early November 2014.

The United States Oil ETF (NYSEMKT: USO) traded up about 2.6%, at $11.98 in a 52-week range of $11.45 to $23.68.

The Market Vectors Oil Services ETF (NYSEMKT: OIH) traded up about 3.7% to $29.15, in a 52-week range of $26.00 to $39.80.

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