Investing.com -- U.S. crude inventories fell in the latest week the Energy Information Administration said on Wednesday.
Crude inventories fell by 0.679 million barrels last week to 4.880 million barrels, compared with analysts' expectations for a 2.358 million-barrel drawdown.
Distillate stockpiles, which include diesel and heating oil, rose by 3.238 million barrels in the week against expectations for a 0.209 million barrel drop, the EIA data showed.
Refinery crude runs fell by 0.251 million barrels in the last week, EIA said. The weekly refinery utilization rate fell 0.5%, according to the report.
U.S. gasoline inventories rose by 3.491 barrels last week the EIA said, compared with expectations for a 2.386 million-barrel build.
"Once again, the EIA’s crude number — i.e. the 700,000-barrel draw — is way out of whack with the 4-million expected build that the API put out last night," said Investing.com analyst Barani Krishnan. "But the decline itself is less than a third of the market’s draw consensus. But the surprise doesn’t end there. The EIA also had a gasoline build of at least 1.2 million barrels more than forecast and a huge unexpected rise of 3 million barrels net in diesel-led distillate inventories."
Krishnan added: "The gasoline build might be pretty consistent with the kind of the lower fuel demand you see at this time of year, with so fewer people taking road trips with the cold weather, and Covid -19 changing the entire dynamics for this year. But more concerning is the build as well in distillates, which should be driving the diesel demand for trucking and other delivery services ahead of the holidays. Also, U.S. production is up a second week in a row, crossing 11 million barrels per day now, though just by 100,000 bpd. Yet, oil prices are up as people remain fixated on the market breaking free of the pandemic in coming months."