BREAKING: Oil ticks higher after big drop in US inventories

The US Energy Information Administration released an official weekly report on US oil inventories at 3:30 pm BST today. API estimates released yesterday in the evening showed crude inventories falling more or less in-line with estimates. However, government report showed quite major deviations from both expectations and yesterday's API releases. Crude oil inventories dropped 4.58 mb - much more than expected. On the other hand, gasoline inventories data showed a surprising 1.3 mb build while distillate inventories dropped much less than expected.

EIA report on US oil inventories

• Oil inventories: -4.58 mb vs -2.5 mb (API: -2.67 mb)
• Gasoline inventories: +1.3 mb vs -1.9 mb (API: -1.0 mb)
• Distillate inventories: -0.35 mb vs -1.8 mb (API: -1.9 mb)

Oil is trading slightly higher following the release. However, scale of the move did not exceed 0.3% and does not change much in the overall technical picture. Taking a look at OIL.WTI at D1 interval, we can see that price dropped below $80 mark today and even briefly moved into territory of a bullish price gap that was triggered by the most recent OPEC cuts.