Investing.com -- U.S. crude oil stockpiles fell by more than 5 million barrels in the just-ended week, petroleum industry group API said in a preliminary report Wednesday that showed a four straight weekly decline in inventory as refiners maxed out fuel processing in preparation for the final hurrah in summer travel.
The Labor Day holiday on Sept 5 unofficially brought to an end U.S. road trips for the summer. Refiners had doubled down on fuel processing in the four weeks running up to the holiday, maintaining an extraordinarily high run rate of more than 93% of capacity.
The U.S. crude inventory balance possibly dipped by 5.521M barrels during the week ended Sept. 1, according to the API, or American Petroleum Institute, adding to the previous week’s decline of 11.486M cited by the group.
The API numbers serve as a precursor to official inventory data on the same due from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, or EIA, on Wednesday.
Along with the broader crude stockpile decline it reported for last week, the API cited a slide of 1.35M barrels last week at the Cushing, Oklahoma hub that takes delivery of U.S. crude. In the prior week, the API reported a Cushing deficit of 2.23M barrels.
On the fuels side, API reported a gasoline draw of 5.09M barrels and a distillate stock build of 0.31M barrels. In the previous week, it noted a 1.4M barrel gain for gasoline and 2.46M gain for distillates.
With the API report out, anticipation builds on what the EIA will cite for last week’s oil supply-demand in the United States, and how that will impact crude prices that fell for the first time last week after a seven-week rally.
For last week, analysts tracked by Investing.com expect the EIA to report a crude stockpile drop of around 2 million barrels, versus the 2.921M-barrel reduction reported during the week to Aug. 25.