HOUSTON, July 25 (Xinhua) -- U.S. crude oil inventories decreased in the week ending July 20, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) said in a report on Wednesday.
According to the Weekly Petroleum Status Report, U.S. commercial crude oil inventories, excluding those in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, decreased by 6.15 million barrels in the week, which was much higher than market's expectation. It had been estimated the inventories would decrease by 3.2 million barrels.
Also, the draw of total motor gasoline inventories surprised the market. The draw of 2.38 million barrels of gasoline was recorded while the market's expectation was only 800,000 barrels.
As for distillate fuel inventories, the market expected a 200,000 barrels of increase, but the report indicated a draw of 101,000 barrels.
The U.S. crude oil production was unchanged last week, maintaining the level of 11 million barrels per day. The oil price received an uptick from the report, up about 1 percent in ten minutes after the report was released Wednesday morning.
