EIA: US crude stocks post third straight weekly decline as exports surge past 4.8 million bpd

US commercial crude inventories fell 640,000 barrels to 423.4 million barrels in the week ended September 11, the EIA said, marking a third consecutive weekly decline though the draw came in well short of the 1.4 million barrel drop analysts had forecast in a Wall Street Journal survey. Stocks remained 1% above the five-year average, meaning the smaller-than-expected draw left the crude cushion essentially where it started the month despite three straight weeks of pulls.

Domestic production held essentially flat, down just 3,000 barrels a day to 13.9 million, leaving the entire net supply shift a function of the export spike rather than any change at the wellhead.

Crude imports rose 234,000 barrels a day to 7.1 million, but exports jumped far more sharply, up 1.4 million barrels a day to 4.8 million, a move that pushed net imports down 1.2 million barrels a day on the week. The export surge did the heavy lifting on the trade side, more than offsetting the import gain and explaining why the header draw, modest as it was, happened at all.

Total motor gasoline stocks moved the opposite direction from crude, rising 794,000 barrels to 207.7 million barrels, a build that caught the market wrong-footed against a Reuters poll that had called for a 1 million barrel draw, a swing of roughly 1.8 million barrels from consensus.

The week's real signal sits in the export number: a jump of that size rarely shows up without either a shift in trading economics or a scramble to move barrels ahead of a pricing window, and it's doing more to shape the crude balance right now than either production or the still-soft gasoline draw.

Written by: Farid Muzaffar