Commercial oil inventories held by OECD countries fell to 2.855 million barrels in February, 44 million barrels above the five-year average, OPEC said Wednesday.
That is down from 2.865 million barrels in January, which was 50 million barrels above the five-year average, OPEC reported earlier this month.
OPEC and its allies in a production cut agreement have said they are aiming to reduce OECD commercial stocks to the five-year average, though they have been mulling other benchmarks to gauge the success of their cuts.
The five-year average may give a false reading of the market's rebalancing, OPEC ministers have said, given the significant build in barrels in storage over the last few years, as well as new production coming online from the US and expected higher demand.
Officials have said they may adjust the target to include tracking of inventories by region and consideration of what crude grades are in storage.
Participants in the production cut deal will discuss this at OPEC's upcoming seminar in June, just before the coalition meets on June 23.
"Consumers' opinion of how much inventories they need to hold may have changed," Saudi energy minister Khalid al-Falih said last month. "We need to make sure that we look at non-OECD inventories, floating storage, investor behavior and numbers from respectable agencies."
The production cut deal calls on OPEC and 10 non-OPEC partners led by Russia to cut a combined 1.8 million b/d in supplies through the end of 2018.
The six-country monitoring committee overseeing the deal said Wednesday that compliance with the cuts hit 138% in February, a record high.
"Given the success of the Declaration of Cooperation, the [monitoring committee] called on participating countries to consider further opportunities to institutionalize their collaboration," OPEC said in a news release touting the compliance figure.
The monitoring committee, which meets in mid-April in Saudi Arabia to assess market conditions, is chaired by Falih and includes ministers from Russia, Kuwait, Venezuela, Algeria and Oman.
