NEW YORK (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 01st September, 2021) The drawdown in US crude oil inventories hit a seven-week high last week, data from the Energy Information Administration showed on Wednesday, as production plummeted amid oilfield shutdowns forced by Hurricane Ida.
US commercial crude oil stockpiles fell by 7.17 million barrels in the week to August 27, the EIA said in its Weekly Petroleum Status Report. That was the largest weekly drawdown since the week to July 16, when some 7.90 million barrels were used up.
Analysts polled by US media had forecast a draw of 3.1 million barrels for last week, just slightly above the 2.98 million drop registered during the week to August 20.
However, the EIA reported an outsized number instead for crude consumption, with analysts citing Hurricane Ida which caused a huge shutdown of production.
"This is Ida-related," John Kilduff, founding partner at New York energy hedge fund Again Capital, told Sputnik. "When you have this much production offline, something has to give."
Hurricane Ida pummeled Louisiana as a Category 4 hurricane, forcing over a loss of 1.74 million barrels per day equivalent of oil production that accounted for 95 percent of the output on the Gulf of Mexico crude and natural gas platforms. Ida also shut the largest privately-owned US crude terminal and nearly half of the country's refining capacity.
Gasoline stockpiles also fell more than expected last week, drawing down 1.73 million barrels against an expected decline of 550,000, the EIA data showed.
Distillate inventories bucked the trend, rising by 1.3 million barrels versus an expected slide of 1.6 million.
Industry officials initially estimated that it could take weeks for oil supplies to normalize from outages caused by Hurricane Ida. But shortly after its landfall, the hurricane weakened into a tropical storm, prompting some analysts to adjust their expectations on the belief that next week's EIA data could even show sharp builds in crude and fuel inventories.
