US crude oil supplies fall by 1.8 mn barrels

The United States’s crude oil supplies fell last week, the Government has said.

Crude supplies dropped by 1.8 million barrels, or 0.5 per cent, to 360.2 million barrels, which is 0.9 per cent above year-ago levels, the Energy Department’s Energy Information Administration said yesterday in its weekly report.

Analysts expected a drop of 2.5 million barrels for the week ended August 30, according to Platts, the energy information arm of McGraw-Hill.

Gasoline supplies also fell by 1.8 million barrels, or 0.8 per cent, to 216 million barrels. That’s 8.6 per cent more than year-ago levels. Analysts expected gasoline supplies to shrink by 1 million barrels.

Demand for gasoline over the four weeks ended August 30 was down 0.3 per cent from a year ago, averaging 9.1 million barrels a day.

US refineries ran at 91.7 per cent of total capacity on average, up 0.5 percentage point from the prior week. Analysts expected capacity to fall to 90.4 per cent.

Supplies of distillate fuel, which include diesel and heating oil, rose by 500,000 barrels to 129.6 million barrels.

Analysts expected distillate stocks to rise by 800.000 barrels.