US OIL INVENTORIES: Crude Stocks Rise; Gasoline Stocks Tumble

U.S. crude inventories rose by more than analysts’ expectations last week, according to data released Wednesday by the U.S. Department of Energy.

Crude oil stockpiles rose by 1.6 million barrels to 359.3 million barrels, compared with an average survey estimate of a 1.1-million-barrel increase. The American Petroleum Institute, an industry group, reported a 1.2-million-barrel build in its weekly report released late Tuesday.

Oil futures held early gains following the report, recently trading up 62 cents to $106.87 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Futures traded as high as $107.19 earlier in the session.

Front-month May reformulated gasoline blendstock, or RBOB, recently traded up 5.06 cents, or 1.7%, to $3.2147 a gallon. May heating oil gained 2.76 cents to $3.2002 a gallon.

U.S. crude inventories are up by more than 23 million barrels since the beginning of the year, and have risen for six-straight weeks. But despite the build-up in crude, gasoline stockpiles have declined for seven-straight weeks, and are down by nearly 12 million barrels compared to last year.

Gasoline stockpiles plummeted, falling by 7 million barrels to 209.7 million barrels, the department’s Energy Information Administration said in its weekly report, compared with a 700,000-barrel drop forecast in a Dow Jones Newswires survey of analysts.

Distillate stocks, which include heating oil and diesel fuel, fell by 2.7 million barrels to 150.8 million barrels, compared with analysts’ forecast that stockpiles would remain unchanged from a week ago.

Refining capacity utilization fell 3 percentage points to 81.4%. Analysts had expected a 0.3 percentage point increase.

API pegged refinery utilization at 78.9% last week, down 5.1 percentage points. The industry group reported stockpiles of gasoline fell by a revised 4.6 million barrels and distillates fell by 3.7 million barrels.