US commercial crude oil inventories decreased 1.6% during the week ending Aug. 12, according to data released by the Energy Information Administration (EIA) on Wednesday.
Inventories declined by around 7.1 million barrels to 425 million barrels, against the market expectation of a fall of 117,000 barrels.
Strategic petroleum reserves, which are not included in commercial crude stocks, also fell by 3.4 million barrels to 461.2 million barrels last week, the data revealed.
Gasoline inventories decreased by 4.6 million barrels to 215.7 million barrels over the same period.
-Crude production falls
According to EIA data, US crude oil imports decreased by 39,000 barrels per day (bpd) to around 6.13 million bpd during the week ending Aug. 12, while crude oil exports increased by 2.9 million bpd to 5 million bpd.
US crude oil production, meanwhile, decreased by 118,000 bpd to approximately 12.52 million bpd over the same period.
In the August Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO), the EIA forecasted that crude oil output in the US would average 11.86 million bpd in 2022, up from 11.2 million bpd in 2021.
In 2023, crude oil output in the country is forecast to reach 12.7 million bpd.
