US crude and distillate stocks fell, gasoline rose last week, EIA says

By Shariq Khan, Laila Kearney and Nicole Jao

NEW YORK, Feb 4 (Reuters) - U.S. crude stocks and distillate inventories fell while gasoline inventories rose in the week ended January 30 as a winter storm gripped large swathes of the country, the Energy Information Administration said on Wednesday.

Crude oil inventories fell by 3.5 million barrels to 420.3 million barrels last week as oil output slid to the lowest since November 2024, the EIA said, compared with analysts' expectations in a Reuters poll for a 489,000-barrel rise.

The decline in U.S. oil production was largely a function of freeze-offs in the past week, Mizuho analyst Bob Yawger said. Production outages had peaked at around 2 million barrels per day during the winter storm that began on January 23 and impacted around 30 states.

Crude stocks at the Cushing, Oklahoma, delivery hub USOICC=ECI fell by 743,000 barrels in the past week, the EIA said.

Global benchmark Brent crude futures LCOc1 and U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude futures CLc1 fell briefly after the EIA data. That was likely because the decline in oil stocks was not as large as the over 11 million barrel decline estimated by the American Petroleum Institute on Tuesday. API/S

Refinery crude runs USOICR=ECI fell by 180,000 barrels per day, and refinery utilization rates USOIRU=ECI fell by 0.4 percentage points last week to 90.5%, the EIA said.

U.S. gasoline stocks USOILG=ECI rose by 685,000 barrels last week to 257.9 million barrels, the highest since June 2020, the EIA data showed. That compared with analysts' expectations in a Reuters poll for a 1.4 million-barrel build.​

Distillate stockpiles USOILD=ECI, which include diesel and heating oil, fell by 5.6 million barrels last week to 127.4 million barrels, versus expectations for a 2.3 million-barrel drop, the EIA data showed.

That was the biggest weekly decline in distillate stockpiles since February 2021, the data showed. Still, U.S. ultra-low sulfur diesel futures HOc1 gave up gains and traded negative after the EIA data because the market had anticipated last week's decline, Andy Lipow, president of Lipow Oil Associates said.

"The futures market is now reflecting March deliveries of diesel and the weather is expected to seasonally begin warming up," Lipow said.

Net U.S. crude imports USOICI=ECI rose by 1.1 million barrels per day, the EIA said.