Crude Oil Inventories Climb as OPEC Prepares to Open the Tap

The American Petroleum Institute (API) estimated that crude oil inventories in the United States rose by 6.037 million barrels for the week ending March 28, after a 4.6 million barrel drop in the prior week.

So far this year, crude oil inventories have climbed nearly 23 million barrels, according to Oilprice calculations of API data.

Earlier this week, the Department of Energy (DoE) reported that crude oil inventories in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) climbed 0.3 million barrels again to 396.4 million barrels in the week ending March 28. Inventory levels in the SPR are hundreds of millions shy of the levels in inventory prior to the SPR withdrawal that took place under the Biden Administration.

At 4:26 pm ET, Brent crude was trading down $0.30 (-0.40%) on the day at $74.47—a $1.30 per barrel gain from this time last week as OPEC gears up to unwind 135,000 bpd worth of production cuts in April and likely again in May. The U.S. benchmark WTI was trading down on the day as well, by $0.26 (-0.36%) at $71.22—a $2 per barrel increase from last week’s level.

Gasoline inventories fell in the week ending March 28, by 1.628 million barrels, after falling by 3.3 million barrels in the week prior. As of last week, gasoline inventories are now 2% above the five-year average for this time of year, according to the latest EIA data.

Distillate inventories also fell this week, falling by 11,000 barrels in the latest week. In the week prior, distillate inventories fell by 1.3 million barrels. Distillate inventories were already about 7% below the five-year average as of the week ending March 21, the latest EIA data shows.

Cushing inventories—the benchmark crude stored and traded at the key delivery point for U.S. futures contracts in Cushing, Oklahoma—rose by 2.244 million barrels, the API data showed.

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