Crude oil futures were largely steady during mid-morning trade in Asia Wednesday after their overnight climb, on a mixed report on last week’s US inventory data and stable forecasts on US crude production. At 10:40 am Singapore time (0240 GMT), ICE March Brent crude futures ticked down a cent/b (0.01%) from Tuesday’s settle to $60.63/b, while the NYMEX February light sweet crude contract moved 7 cents/b (0.13%) lower at $52.04/b.
According to analyst reports citing data released Tuesday by the American Petroleum Institute, US gasoline inventory and US distillate inventory had posted a build of 5.99 million barrels and 3.21 million barrels, respectively, for the week ended January 11. “Another crazy product build in gasoline,” The Price Futures Group analyst Phil Flynn said in a note describing the US gasoline data.
US crude inventories, on the other hand, posted a mild draw of around 600,000 barrels last week, analysts said citing API data. Some analysts said a draw of 550,000 barrels and others said 650,000 barrels. Analysts surveyed Monday by S&P Global Platts were expecting US crude stocks to have declined by 250,000 barrels and US gasoline stocks to have increased by 2.6 million barrels.
The more definitive numbers on last week’s US inventory data is due for release from the US Energy Information Administration later Wednesday. “The US private API report proved conducive for oil prices with the reflection of a small 650,000 barrels draw in inventory,” IG market strategist Pan Jingyi said.
“Given the huge difference with the official EIA report from last week, however, it would still make the DOE [Department of Energy] report a risk event ahead of the OPEC report this week,” she added. The EIA on Tuesday released its monthly Short-Term Energy Outlook in which it said that US crude production is on track to hit 12 million b/d in March 2019 and 13 million b/d in October 2020. The US will become a net oil exporter in Q4 2020, EIA said, with total exports of crude and refined products exceeding total imports by 870,000 b/d.