Gasoline and Distillate Inventories Could Support Crude Oil Prices
WTI Crude Oil Prices Rally before the Crude Oil Inventory Report
API gasoline and distillate inventories
The API (American Petroleum Institute) published its weekly petroleum status report on March 22, 2016. The report showed that US gasoline inventories fell by 4.3 MMbbls (million barrels) for the week ending March 18, 2016. Similarly, US distillate inventories fell by 0.39 MMbbls between March 11 and March 18.
EIA’s gasoline and distillate inventories and estimates
The EIA (U.S. Energy Information Administration) is expected to release its weekly crude oil inventory report on March 23, 2016. To learn more about US crude oil stocks, read the previous part of the series. The EIA reported that gasoline stocks fell by 0.7 MMbbls to 249.7 MMbbls for the week ending March 11, 2016. The distillate fuel inventory fell by 1.1 MMbbls to 161.3 MMbbls for the same period.
Market surveys project that gasoline inventories could have fallen by 1.4 MMbbls for the week ending March 18, 2016. The consensus of falling gasoline and distillate stocks could support crude oil prices. High crude oil supports oil producers like Ultra Petroleum (UPL), Swift Energy (SFY) Denbury Resources (DNR), and Cimarex (XEC).
The roller coaster ride in oil and gas prices impacts ETFs like the ProShares Ultra Bloomberg Crude Oil ETF (UCO), the Vanguard Energy ETF (VDE), and the ProShares UltraShort Bloomberg Crude Oil ETF (SCO).
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