BREAKING: Oil muted after bigger-than-expected inventory draw

The US Department of Energy released an official weekly report on US oil and oil derivative inventories at 4:00 pm BST today. Report came a day later than usual this week due to the US holiday on Monday. Private API report released yesterday in the evening pointed to a deeper drop in crude inventories, an unexpected build in gasoline inventories and an unexpected drop in distillate inventories.

Official report showed a big drop in headline crude inventories as well as small build in gasoline and distillate inventories. Oil traded mixed following the releases and struggled to make a bigger move in either direction.

Official report on US oil inventories

• Oil inventories: -3.83 mb vs -0.4 mb expected (API: -1.25 mb)
• Gasoline inventories: +0.48 mb vs -0.2 mb expected (API: +2.94 mb)
• Distillate inventories: +0.43 mb vs +0.8 mb expected (API: -0.30 mb)

US report on oil inventories failed to trigger moves on the OIL.WTI market. Taking a look at the chart at H4 interval, we can see that price continues to hover around 50-period moving average (green line). Source: xStation5