The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) released its weekly petroleum status report Wednesday morning. U.S. commercial crude inventories increased by 4.8 million barrels last week, maintaining a total U.S. commercial crude inventory of 490.7 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 rose by 2.3 million barrels in the week ending December 11. For the same period, analysts had estimated a decrease of 1.4 barrels in crude inventories.

Total gasoline inventories increased by 1.7 million barrels last week, according to the EIA, and remained into the upper half of the five-year average range. Total motor gasoline supplied (the agency’s measure of consumption) averaged over 9.2 million barrels a day for the past four weeks, up by 0.7% compared with the same period a year ago.

It appears that the U.S. Congress has reached an agreement on the federal budget for 2016. The 40-year ban on exports of crude oil will be lifted as part of that agreement. The full House and full Senate have to pass the compromise bill, which also extends current tax credits for solar and wind projects. Do not expect refiners to cheer the news.

Crude prices are rising on the assumption that the legislation will make it through the Congress and get a signature from President Obama. While both are likely, the results of an EIA study released in September estimate that the impact on crude oil or U.S. pump prices is not expected to be significant.

Before the EIA report, benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude for January delivery traded down about 1.5% at around $36.70 a barrel. WTI settled at $37.35 on Tuesday and slipped to a low of $36.53 earlier Wednesday morning. The WTI price dipped to a new intra-day low of around $36.35 immediately after the report’s release. The 52-week range on WTI futures is $34.53 to $65.56.

Distillate inventories increased by 2.6 million barrels last week and remained in the upper half of the average range for this time of year. Distillate product supplied averaged over 3.5 million barrels a day over the past four weeks, down by 8.2% when compared with the same period last year. Distillate production averaged 5.1 million barrels a day last week, down about 100,000 barrels a day compared with the prior week’s production.

For the past week, crude imports averaged over 8.3 million barrels a day, up about 291,000 barrels a day compared with the previous week. Refineries were running at 91.9% of capacity, with daily input of averaging over 16.6 million barrels, about 41,000 barrels a day below the previous week’s average.

According to AAA, the current national average pump price per gallon of regular gasoline is $2.011, down about 0.4% from $2.019 a week ago and from $2.158 a month ago. Last year at this time, a gallon of regular gasoline cost $2.526 on average in the United States.

GasBuddy puts Wednesday’s national average pump price at $2.009, even closer to the $2 per gallon price that should arrive in time for Christmas.

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 down about 0.8%, at $78.84 in a 52-week range of $66.55 to $95.18. Year to date, Exxon stock traded down about 14.5%, and it is down about 18% since early November of 2014, as of Tuesday’s close.

Chevron Corp. (NYSE: CVX) traded down less than 0.1%, at $92.78 in a 52-week range of $69.58 to $114.45. As of Tuesday’s close, Chevron shares have dropped about 17.5% year to date and are down about 23% since early November 2014.

The United States Oil ETF (NYSEMKT: USO) traded down about 2.5%, at $11.11 in a 52-week range of $10.79 to $22.43.

The Market Vectors Oil Services ETF (NYSEMKT: OIH) traded down about 0.5%, at $28.48, in a 52-week range of $26.00 to $39.80.

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