US commercial crude oil inventories increased by 0.3% during the week ending March 10, according to data released by the Energy Information Administration (EIA) late Wednesday.
Inventories rose by around 1.6 million barrels to 480.1 million barrels, against the American Petroleum Institute’s expectation of a decrease of 600,000 barrels.
However, strategic petroleum reserves, which are excluded from commercial crude stocks, stayed unchanged at 371.6 million barrels last week, the data revealed.
Gasoline inventories decreased by 2.1 million barrels to 236 million barrels over the same period.
– Crude production increases
EIA data showed that US crude oil imports decreased by 55,000 barrels per day (bpd) to around 6.21 million bpd during the week ending March 10, while crude oil exports climbed by 1.66 million bpd to about 5.02 million bpd.
US crude oil production, meanwhile, rose by 3,000 bpd to around 12.64 million bpd over the same period.
In the March Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO), the EIA forecasted that crude oil output in the US would average 12.44 million bpd in 2023, up from 11.90 million bpd in 2022.
Crude oil output in the country in 2024 is forecast to reach 12.63 million bpd.
