The U.S. Energy Information Administration on Wednesday reported that crude inventories climbed by 1.3 million barrels for the week ended April 10. That was smaller than the 3.5 million barrels forecast by analysts polled by Platts and the 2.6 million-barrel increase reported by the American Petroleum Institute on Tuesday. “Albeit the 14th consecutive week of builds in a swollen oil supply, recently oil has often closed higher on inventory-data day proving fundamentals to be erroneous,” said John Macaluso, research analyst at Tyche Capital Advisors. The “rising conflict between Iraq and Syria as well as new Saudi Arabia attacks in Yemen leave a lingering fear premium in the market,” he said.
The EIA also said gasoline supplies were down by 2.1 million barrels, while distillate stockpiles rose two million barrels last week. Analysts polled by Platts were looking for a decline of 900,000 barrels for gasoline supplies and a fall of 150,000 for distillates, which include heating oil.
In a separate monthly report issued Wednesday, the International Energy Agency upwardly revised its oil demand growth estimate for 2015 by 90,000 barrels a day to 93.6 million barrels a day. The global market has seen a “stronger-than-previously projected demand response thus far in 2015,” with demand up 1.3 million barrels a day year-over-year in the first quarter of this year, Matthew Parry, an oil analyst at the Paris-based IEA, told Market Watch, in an email. But “it is still far too early to be making any firm conclusions about this being a new trend,” he said. And “from an overall perspective, it is very important to acknowledge that despite the upwardly revised demand outlook for 1Q15, a similarly-sized upgrading in global supplies has been seen, leaving the market balance roughly on-a-par with month earlier forecasts.”