On Wednesday, November 19th, the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) released its inventory report, showing that US crude oil inventories fell last week due to increased refining and export demand, while gasoline and distillate fuel inventories increased.

For the week ending November 14th, US commercial crude oil inventories decreased by 3.4 million barrels to 424.2 million barrels, compared to market expectations of a 600,000-barrel decrease.

Custing, Oklahoma crude oil inventories decreased by 698,000 barrels to 21.82 million barrels.

US crude oil exports increased by 1.342 million barrels per day to 4.158 million barrels per day; net crude oil imports decreased by 613,000 barrels per day to 1.792 million barrels per day.

Crude oil futures recovered some of their losses after the report's release, as the decline in crude oil inventories was larger than expected.

"A strong rebound in refinery throughput and crude oil exports helped push down U.S. crude oil inventories," said Matt Smith, an analyst at Kpler.

He added, "Cushing inventories fell for the second consecutive week, again near record lows."

Refinery Crude Oil Processing Increased

U.S. refinery crude oil processing increased by 259,000 barrels per day, with capacity utilization rising 0.6 percentage points to 90.0% from the previous week.

"This is a supportive report," said John Kilduff, a partner at Again Capital. "The rapid rebound in refinery capacity utilization led to a decline in crude oil inventories. The market was surprised by how quickly capacity utilization recovered to this level."

Total supply of refined product products, a demand indicator, fell by 613,000 barrels per day to 20.16 million barrels per day. Gasoline demand fell by 500,000 barrels per day to 8.53 million barrels per day, while distillate fuel demand fell by 136,000 barrels per day to 3.88 million barrels per day.

U.S. gasoline inventories rose by 2.3 million barrels to 207.4 million barrels, compared with market expectations of a 200,000-barrel decrease.

U.S. distillate fuel inventories, including diesel and heating oil, rose by 200,000 barrels to 111.1 million barrels, compared with market expectations of a 1.2 million-barrel decrease.

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