U.S. crude oil inventories increased for three consecutive weeks, and international oil prices fell back
The Sverdrup oil field has fully been reopened for operation in the North Sea of Norway. For three weeks, now, U.S. crude oil inventories have shown an increase. The international crude oil prices have fallen back a bit; however, this market is still supported by a flare-up of the war between Russia and Ukraine, along with high tensions within the Middle East; thus, oil prices recede less vigorously than would otherwise be indicated. On Wednesday, November 20, West Texas Intermediate crude oil settled at $68.87 a barrel, on the New York Mercantile Exchange for December 2024, down $0.52 from the previous trading day, a decrease of 0.75%, with an intra-day trading range of $68.75 - $70.15; Brent crude oil settled at $72.81 on January 2025; this was on the London Intercontinental Exchange and had a settlement price that was down $0.50 from the previous trading day, by 0.68% drop-in intra-day trading range of $72.70-$73.94.
The Johan Sverdrup oil field in the North Sea is fully back to production by Equinor on Tuesday after an outage in supply. Last Monday saw futures on both European and American crude as high as $2 a barrel after news broke that Norway's Johan Sverdrup oil field had stopped pumping crude oil. Once the fault was removed, on Tuesday, production from the oil field was slowly being restored to normal. The largest oil field in Western Europe, the field hit an all-time high in crude oil production in September this year, peaking at over 756,000 barrels a day, which is between 6% and 7% of daily crude oil consumption in Europe.
Russian President Vladimir Putin approved a change this week that will allow Russia to respond nuclearly to the use of conventional weapons after Ukraine used US-made weapons to attack a military supply station in the Bryansk region of Russia. Analysts believe that the escalation of the situation "may be the most extreme tension between Russia and Ukraine in months, if not quarters", but they failed to trigger a more meaningful rebound in oil prices from the lows so far this year.
US gasoline demand and distillate demand decreased month-on-month. According to the data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, in the single-week demand, the total daily demand for U.S. oil was 19.771 million barrels, 1.812 million barrels lower than the previous week; among them, the daily demand for gasoline in the United States was 8.419 million barrels, 964,000 barrels lower than the previous week; the daily demand for distillate oil was 3.775 million barrels, 323,000 barrels lower than the daily average of the previous week.
Unrefined oil stock across the USA consisted of 819,482 million barrels in the week through November 15, 2024, including strategic reserves, reflecting an increase of 1,945 thousand barrels from the previous week; the volume of commercial crude oil is becoming less and less, amounting to 430,292 million barrels, an increase of 545 thousand barrels from the preceding week; the stock of gasoline stood at 208,927 million barrels, with an increase of 2,054 million barrels over the previous week; distillate oil showed an inventory of 114,301 million barrels, reflecting a decrease of 114 million barrels from the previous week.
In the past week, US average daily imports of crude oil were 7.684 million barrels, an increase of 1.175 million barrels from last week, and average daily imports of refined oil were 1.464 million barrels, down by 325,000 barrels from the previous week. Average daily crude oil exports from the US were 4.378 million barrels, an increase of 938,000 barrels from the previous week, while down by 408,000 barrels compared with the same week last year.
On the week ending November 15, the average daily crude oil production of the United States was 13.201 million barrels, down by 199000 barrels from last week's level, i.e., an increase of 1000 barrels when compared with the corresponding period last year; for the four weeks ending November 15, the average daily crude oil output was 13.4 million barrels, which was 1.5% above that of last year. In the year-to-date, the average daily production in the United States has been 13222 thousand barrels, higher by 5.7% over the same period last year.
