Surprise Crude Inventory Build

​The American Petroleum Institute (API) estimated a build for crude oil of 3.754 million barrels this week, compared to analyst predictions of a 1.867 million barrels draw. This came as a surprise to the market. U.S. crude inventories have decreased by 73 million barrels since the start of 2021 and approximately 16 million barrels since the start of 2020.

Oil prices were trading down sharply on Tuesday, continuing Monday's selloff. In conjunction with this, China locked down millions of its residents in some of its largest cities which has a huge potential imapct for oil demand. 
 
U.S. crude oil production has remained at the same levels for five weeks in a row, at 11.6 million barrels per day for the week ending March 4. This is down 1.5 million barrels per day from before the pandemic.
 
The API also reported a draw in gasoline inventories at 3.794 million barrels for the week ending March 11, following the previous week's 1.988-million-barrel draw. Distillate stocks saw an increase in inventory of 888,000 million barrels for the week, after last week's 5.485-million barrel decrease. Cushing saw a 2.308 million-barrel increase this week. Cushing inventories declined to 22.2 million barrels as of March 4, down from 59.2 million barrels at the start of 2021, and down from 37.3 million barrels at the end of 2021.