On Wednesday, January 14th, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) released its inventory report, showing that due to increased refining activity and imports, U.S. crude oil inventories unexpectedly increased significantly last week, and gasoline inventories also rose far more than expected, while distillate fuel inventories slightly decreased.
The data showed that in the week ending January 9th, U.S. crude oil inventories increased by 3.391 million barrels to 422.447 million barrels, while analysts surveyed had expected a decrease of approximately 1.7 million barrels.
Despite the report showing an unexpected increase in crude oil inventories last week, crude oil futures prices did not change significantly.
Giovanni Staunovo, an analyst at UBS, said: "This data is bearish. Gasoline inventories increased, and increased imports boosted crude oil inventories, but geopolitical factors are currently dominating the oil market."
Oil prices have risen for five consecutive trading days due to concerns about supply disruptions in Iran after the protests.
John Kilduff, a partner at Again Capital in New York, said: "Imports this week were very large, much higher than the previous week and the average level—about 1 million barrels more than we usually see, which contributed to the increase in crude oil inventories."
In that week, crude oil inventories at the Cushing delivery hub in Oklahoma increased by 745,000 barrels to 23.59 million barrels.
Distillate fuel inventories, including diesel and heating oil, decreased by 29,000 barrels to 129.244 million barrels, while analysts had expected an increase of approximately 500,000 barrels.
U.S. net crude oil imports increased by 710,000 barrels per day to 2.79 million barrels per day, the highest level since November 2024.
The EIA said that refinery crude oil processing increased by 49,000 barrels per day last week, and refinery utilization increased by 0.6 percentage points to 95.3%. The four-week average refinery utilization rate was 94.8%, compared to 92.5% in the same period last year.
EIA data showed that gasoline inventories at the Gulf Coast refining hub increased by approximately 1.5 million barrels last week to 94.8 million barrels, the highest level since January 2020. During the week, total U.S. gasoline inventories increased by 8.977 million barrels to 251.013 million barrels, the largest weekly increase since December 2023, exceeding analysts' expectations of an increase of approximately 3.6 million barrels.
Last week, gasoline supply, representing demand, increased from 8.17 million barrels per day to 8.3 million barrels per day, while distillate fuel oil demand increased from 3.2 million barrels per day to 4.01 million barrels per day.
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