The American Petroleum Institute (API) reported this week a large accumulation of crude oil of 4.762 billion barrels, while analysts predicted a tie of 1.933 billion barrels.
Construction comes as the Department of Energy released 6.9 million barrels of Strategic Oil Reserves the week ended July 8, to 485.1 million barrels.
U.S. crude stockpiles have lost about 63 million barrels since early 2021, but net losses have been negligible since early 2020, according to API data.
The previous week, the API reported an increase in crude inventories of 3.825 million barrels after analysts had forecast a draw of 1.1 million barrels.
The WTI continued to fall on Wednesday for fears of a recession and fears of a drop in demand from China over the presence of the new Covid variant there. The WTI was trading at 8.23% a day at 2:50 pm ET before launch at $ 95.52, a slide of about $ 2.50 a week. Brent crude traded 7.48% a day at $ 99.09, a drop of nearly $ 2 a week.
U.S. crude production data for the week ending July 1 remained at 12.1 million bpd, according to the latest EIA data.
The API also reported an accumulation of gasoline inventories this week of 2.927 million barrels for the week ending July 8, compared to the previous week’s draw of 1.814 million barrels.
Distillate stocks continued their own accumulation of 3.262 million barrels for the week, compared to last week’s 635,000 barrel drop.
Cushing ended inventory gains with an increase of 298,000 barrels this week, compared to the legal week draw. Official EIA Cushing inventories for the week ending July 1 were 21.33 billion, slightly more than the previous week’s 21.261 million.
At 16:37 ET, WTI was trading lower at $ 95.47 (-8.28%), and Brent was trading at $ 99.09 (-7.48%).
By Julianne Geiger for Oilprice.com
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