U.S. crude stocks soar by more than 10 mln barrels – EIA

Dec 14 (Reuters) – US crude inventories rose by more than 10 million barrels last week, the highest since March 2021, buoyed by releases from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and as refiners scaled back activity.

Crude oil inventories (USOILC=ECI) rose 10.2 million barrels to 424.1 million barrels for the week ended December 9, compared with analysts’ expectations of a 3.6 million barrel decline in a Reuters poll.

Crude inventories figure included an adjustment of 2.26 million per day (bpd). Kpler analyst Matt Smith attributed the adjustment to exports, which were significantly lower in the US Gulf last week than reported by the EIA.

The sharp rise in crude oil comes as a recession threatens the economies of the United States and Europe and has markets worried about demand for crude oil and petroleum products.

SPR crude inventories fell 4.7 million barrels on the week to 382.3 million, the lowest since January 1984, while inventories in Cushing, Oklahoma, the US futures supply center (USOICC=ECI), fell 426,000 barrels increased, the EIA said.

The closure last week of the Keystone pipeline, which transports about 620,000 bpd of crude from Canada to the United States, is expected to hit Cushing and Gulf Coast stockpiles.

Refinery crude runs (USOICR=ECI) fell 459,000 bpd last week, the EIA said, reducing total utilization (USOIRU=ECI) by 3.3 percentage points to 92.2% of total capacity.

“[Refiners]were just making too much product and had to scale back refinery utilization, and that will tempt contractors,” said Bob Yawger, Mizuho’s director of energy futures.

US gasoline inventories (USOILG=ECI) rose 4.5 million barrels to 223.6 million barrels on the week, the EIA said, compared with expectations for a 2.7 million barrel rise

Similarly, distillate inventories (USOILD=ECI), which includes diesel and heating oil, rose 1.4 million barrels to 120.2 million barrels on the week, EIA data showed, during an increase of 2.5 million barrel was expected.

US net crude oil imports (USOICI=ECI) fell 31,000 bpd last week, the EIA said.

Crude oil futures, already trading higher during the day, extended gains after the data release. Brent crude was up $1.23, or 1.5%, to $81.92 a barrel, while US crude was up $1.16, or 1.6%, to $76.54 a barrel at 10:45 a.m. EST ( 1545 GMT).

Reporting by Arathy Somasekhar in Houston Editing by Marguerita Choy

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