Crude oil inventories in US increase for w/e Sept. 27

By Ovunc Kutlu

ANKARA (AA) - U.S. crude oil inventories increased by more than market expectations last week, according to data released by the Energy Information Administration (EIA) on Wednesday.

Commercial crude oil inventories increased by 3.1 million barrels, or 0.7%, to 422.6 million barrels for the week ending Sept. 27, the EIA data showed. The market expectation was a rise of 1.5 million barrels. Inventories rose by 2.4 million barrels in the previous week.

This also marked the third consecutive week that crude oil stocks in the U.S. showed a buildup.

Strategic petroleum reserves, which are not included in the commercial crude stocks, remained unchanged at 644.8 million barrels last week, according to the data.

Gasoline inventories, on the other hand, showed a decline of 0.2 million barrels, or 0.1%, to 230 million barrels during that period, against the market expectation of an increase of 0.45 million barrels. The previous week saw gasoline inventories increase by 0.52 million barrels.

- Crude production falls

U.S. crude oil production decreased slightly by 92,000 barrels per day (bpd) to 12.4 million bpd for the week ending Sept. 27, the EIA data showed.

Last week, there was an 8,000 bpd increase in crude production in the state of Alaska, while other U.S. states excluding Hawaii saw their output decline by a total of 100,000 bpd.

Crude oil production of 12.5 million bpd, a record high level for the country, was last seen the previous week and during the week ending August 23, according to the EIA data.

The U.S.' crude oil production is expected to average 12.2 million bpd in 2019 and 13.2 million bpd in 2020, according to the EIA's Short Term Energy Outlook report for September.