US commercial crude oil inventories fell by almost 9 million barrels week over week, according to the US Energy Information Administration's latest weekly petroleum status report. The release put commercial crude stocks, which exclude oil held in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, at 415.577 million barrels as of October 9. Rigzone highlighted the size of the decline in its October 16 coverage of the data.
The 415.577 million barrel total refers to crude held in commercial inventories, meaning oil owned by industry rather than stockpiled by the federal government for emergency use. That is close to 9 million barrels below the level recorded a week earlier. A draw of that size means more crude left commercial storage during the reporting week than entered it.
The weekly petroleum status report is the EIA's recurring snapshot of US petroleum supplies. The EIA, the US agency that compiles national energy statistics, publishes the series on a weekly cycle. Because the commercial crude total strips out the reserve, it is read as a measure of oil available for commercial activity rather than emergency stockpiles. Movements in the series are followed by market participants as an input when assessing near-term US supply conditions.
A reduction of nearly 9 million barrels in a single reporting week lowers the volume of crude sitting in US commercial storage as of the October 9 reading. For engineers, traders and analysts who track the weekly series, the figure provides an updated benchmark of commercially held oil heading into the rest of the month. The EIA's next weekly petroleum status report will show whether the downward movement continued.
Source: Rigzone
