During the week ended December 16, commercial reserves fell by 5.9 million barrels, while analysts expected an increase of 2.5 million.
Commercial crude oil reserves in the United States fell last week, according to figures released Wednesday by the US Energy Information Agency (EIA), partly due to a slowdown in imports.
During the week ended December 16, these commercial stocks fell by 5.9 million barrels, while analysts expected an increase of 2.5 million, according to a consensus established by the Bloomberg agency.
Added to this is a further drop in strategic reserves, of 3.6 million barrels. They are now at their lowest level since December 1983.
The US government has begun to replenish these strategic reserves, but the result will not materialize for several weeks.
This publication pushed crude prices, which were already on the rise, in the back. Around 4:05 p.m. GMT, a barrel of American West Texas Intermediate (WTI) for delivery in February took 2.47%, to 78.12 dollars.
The downward movement in inventories is partly explained by the sharp slowdown in imports (-15%), while crude oil exports remained unchanged.
For Matt Smith of Kepler, the decline in imports is due to the shutdown of the Keystone pipeline.
This pipeline which carries Canadian oil to the United States had been closed for almost a week due to a leak in northern Kansas. It was partially reopened on December 14.
The decrease in inventories was limited by the sharp deceleration in activity at refineries, which only used 90.9% of their capacity, compared to 92.2% the previous week and 95.5% two weeks ago .
Another surprise element was the rebound in demand for refined products (+4.8% over one week), which is now above its level for the same period last year.
The EIA notably recorded a resurgence in demand for gasoline (+5.5%) as well as for distilled products (+6.5%), which include, among others, heating oil.
For Matt Smith, this acceleration in demand “was not enough to stop the increase in gasoline inventories”, which rose by 2.5 million barrels and now stand slightly above their level of l last year around the same time.
Production was maintained at the same level as the previous week, at 12.1 million barrels per day, volumes which have been roughly the same every week since June.