U.S. crude oil inventories increased last week and the refining sector input 784,000 more barrels per day than the previous week's average, according to a report released by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) on Wednesday.

According to the Weekly Petroleum Status Report by the EIA, U.S. commercial crude oil inventories, excluding those in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, of the week ending Feb. 2 increased by 1.9 million barrels from the previous week.

At 420.3 million barrels, U.S. crude oil inventories are in the middle of the average range for this time of year.

Total products supplied over the last four-week period averaged over 20.8 million barrels per day, up by 4.8 percent from the same period last year.

Over the last four weeks, motor gasoline product supplied averaged 8.9 million barrels per day, up by 6.5 percent from the same period last year.

Distillate fuel product supplied averaged 4.2 million barrels per day over the last four weeks, up by 8.9 percent from the same period last year. Jet fuel product supplied is down 0.6 percent compared to the same four-week period last year.

The price for West Texas Intermediate, the U.S. benchmark for the price of oil, tumbled about 2.5 percent to 61.8 U.S dollars a barrel Wednesday afternoon, sliding to a two-week low following a plunge in global equities earlier this week.

On Tuesday, The American Petroleum Institute (API) reported a decrease of 1.05 million barrels of crude oil inventories in the United States.

Meanwhile, EIA said on Tuesday that U.S. crude oil production will be 10.6 million and 11.2 million barrels per day in 2018 and 2019 respectively, marking the highest annual average level in the country.

The previous record of 9.6 million barrels per day in the United States was set in 1970.

The EIA estimated that U.S. crude oil production averaged 10.2 million barrels per day in January, up 100,000 barrels per day from the December level, and total U.S. crude oil production averaged 9.3 million barrels per day in 2017.

Meanwhile, the EIA forecast Brent spot prices will average about 62 dollars a barrel in both 2018 and 2019 compared with an average of 54 dollars a barrel in 2017. It also expected the WTI crude oil prices to average 4 dollars lower than Brent prices in both 2018 and 2019.

Source:
courtesy of XINHUA NEWS AGENCY

by Xinhua News Agency

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