WTI Crude Recovers On Cushing Inventories

The American Petroleum Institute (API) reported a small inventory build in crude oil that was just enough to keep the market from panicking because of declining inventories. This week, the API estimated the inventory for crude oil to be 655,000 barrels.

U.S. crude inventories are now 60 million barrels below the figure recorded at the beginning of 2021. Analyst expectations for the week were for a build of 1.550 million barrels for the week. In the previous week, the API reported a draw in oil inventories of 2.485-million barrels, compared to the 1.90-million-barrel build that analysts had predicted.

Oil prices had been trading up just slightly on Tuesday in the run-up to the data release, with WTI rising to $81 and Brent trading at $82.58 per barrel. WTI was down $3 week on week, while Brent was down $2 per barrel on the week.