US crude, fuel inventories fall last week, EIA says

The Energy Information Administration (EIA), which released its report on Wednesday, said that the U.S. crude, gasoline, and distillate inventory fell last week.

The EIA reported that crude inventories dropped by 515,000 barrels, to 425.5 millions barrels for the week ending October 25. This was in contrast with the analysts' polled expectations of a rise of 2.3 million barrels.

Crude oil stocks at Cushing, Oklahoma's delivery hub, rose by 681,000 bbls.

Exports increased by 149,000 barrels per day, to 4,26 million bpd.

The futures for U.S. Crude and Brent crude were not significantly affected by the report.

Refinery crude production fell by 31,000 barrels a day (bpd), and the refinery utilization rate dropped by 0.4 percentage point to 89.1%.

The EIA reported that gasoline stocks dropped by 2.7m barrels last week, to 210.9m barrels. Analysts had expected a 600k barrel build.

U.S. futures for gasoline extended gains following the surprise drop in data.

The EIA reported that distillate stocks, which includes diesel and heating oil fell by one million barrels. This was compared to expectations of a 1.6-million barrel drop.

U.S. heating oil futures pared gains after the report showed a smaller-than-expected draw. (Reporting and editing by Marguerita Choy in Houston, Georgina McCartney from Houston)

(source: Reuters)