API: US Oil Inventories Rise, But Commercial Crude Stocks Continue to Fall

The American Petroleum Institute (API) released its latest estimates on US oil and gasoline inventories for the week ending September 18. According to the API, crude oil inventories rose by 1.786 million barrels in that week. However, when compared to the previous week's growth of 7.14 million barrels, this increase seems relatively modest.

The API notes that commercial crude oil inventories excluding the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) have decreased by a substantial 39 million barrels over the past 23 weeks. Despite this decline, US crude oil inventories are up nearly 12 million barrels for the year, thanks in part to draws from the SPR.

The SPR has been used to support commercial inventories, with another 400,000 barrels drawn down on September 18. This brings the total inventory held in the SPR to 284.6 million barrels, which is still shy of its maximum capacity by a significant margin, 429 million barrels. The generally accepted operational minimum for oil in the SPR is between 250-300 million barrels.

US production levels for the week ending September 11 were lower than expected, coming in at 13.944 million barrels per day (bpd), down from 13.944 bpd in the previous week and up only 462,000 bpd from a year earlier.