Quote from InvestVision:
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_world_business/view/410005/1/.html
The US Department of Energy will publish its weekly report on American energy inventories on Thursday, one day later than normal because of a public holiday in the United States last Monday.
The report, keenly awaited by traders, is expected to show that inventories had risen for an eighth week in the United States, the world's biggest energy consuming nation.
"After increasing at a rate of five million barrels per week since end-November, the increase in US oil and oil product stockpiles for the last two weeks has been a far more muted two to three million barrels per week," said Thierry Lefrancois of Natixis.
"With refinery utilisation rates surprising on the downside, crude oil stocks have kept increasing while stocks of oil products have begun to fall," Lefrancois said.
Amid deepening recession in the United States, crude oil inventories over the last seven weeks have risen to more than 350 million barrels as of the week of February 6.
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Light, sweet crude for the April delivery rose $1.56 to $38.97 on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The vast majority of trades have shifted to April, with the March contract expiring Friday.
Prices also were getting support by a weaker dollar compared with the euro. Oil tends to rise when the dollar drops as investors use the commodity as a hedge against inflation.
The Energy Information Administration said crude stocks decreased 200,000 barrels to 350.6 million barrels for the week ended Friday. Analysts had expected stock to grow by 3.5 million barrels, according to Platts, the energy information arm of McGraw-Hill Cos. Inventories have risen more than 30 million barrels in the prior six weeks.
Yet a stunning drop-off in driving by Americans has led to growing levels of gasoline in storage.
Total gasoline inventories rose 1.1 million barrels last week compared with analyst projections of a decline of 1 million barrels. Distillate inventories declined by 800,000 barrels compared with projections of a decline of 1.5 million barrels.
The Department of Transportation said Thursday that motorists drove 3.8 billion fewer miles in December â when gasoline prices bottomed at $1.61 a gallon after reaching $4.11 in July â than they did in December 2007. The 1.6 percent decline in driving marks the 14th consecutive months of declining driving with the decline totaling 115 billion miles.
