Oil prices settled on Thursday, October 13, as a U.S. government report of larger-than-expected draws in diesel and gasoline helped prices rebound from losses after data showed the first crude inventory build in six weeks, CNBC reports.
Brent crude futures were trading up 19 cents at $52 per barrel at 2:35 p.m. ET (1835 GMT). U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude settled up 26 cents to $50.44 per barrel.
Crude prices dipped when the Energy Information Administration (EIA) said U.S. crude stocks swelled 4.9 million barrels in the week ended Oct. 7, much more than the 700,000 barrels forecast by analysts polled by Reuters. Prices bounced back as the market turned its attention to product inventory drawdowns in the same EIA data.
The EIA reported a drop of 3.7 million barrels for distillates, which include diesel and heating oil, and 1.9 million barrels decline for gasoline. Analysts had expected distillates to draw by just 1.6 million barrels and gasoline to decline by 1.5 million. U.S. gasoline futures were up about 1.3 percent at $1.4804.
“There is a lot of seasonality in this data,” Scott Shelton, energy futures broker at ICAP in Durham, North Carolina, said, adding that crude builds were common this time of year as U.S. refineries headed into maintenance. Shelton said the rise of crude imports by 110,000 barrels per day (bpd) last week was “marginal” and “hard to get too excited about if you were bearish.” John Kilduff, partner at New York energy hedge fund Again Capital, said that while more crude builds were likely in the coming weeks due to depressed refinery runs, “the declines in distillate fuels, of late, are starting to add up.”
“We remain a long way from supplies getting tight, but it is a trend worth monitoring,” Kilduff added. Oil prices have trended higher, with Brent gaining more than 13 percent, since the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries announced on Sept. 27 its first planned output cut in eight years to rein in a global supply glut that forced crude to crash from highs above $100.
But OPEC’s production figures jar with its expressed desire to cut output, with the group’s September production reaching eight-year highs.
