How to Read Crude Oil Inventory Data

Crude Oil is one of the most popular trading instruments among commodity traders. But before doing trade on any instrument every trader must know about the news related to that instrument, fundamental outlook, demand & supply factor, technical outlook.

Analyzing Crude Oil Inventory

Some important inventory data needs to keep in focus while analyzing crude oil inventory:

• U.S. API Weekly Crude Oil Stock
• U.S. Crude Oil Inventories
• U.S. Gasoline Inventories
• U.S. EIA Weekly Distillates Stocks

These are the important crude oil reports released in the United States among these all U.S. API Weekly Crude Oil Stock and U.S. Crude Oil Inventories are the two main important crude oil inventory reports.

API inventory report is released by the American Petroleum Institute (API) and other one U.S. Crude Oil Inventory is released by the Energy Information Administration (EIA).

API provides the information of all segments of America’s oil and natural gas industry. They have more than 600 members who produce, process and distribute most of the nation’s energy. The industry supports more than ten million U.S. jobs and is backed by a growing grassroots movement of millions of Americans.

API was established in 1919 as a Standards Setting Organization. EIA is an agency of the United States Federal Statistical System and also a part of the US energy department. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) collects, analyzes, and disseminates independent and impartial energy information to promote sound policymaking, efficient markets, and public understanding of energy and its interaction with the economy and the environment.

EIA provides a wide range of information and data products covering energy production, stocks, demand, imports, exports, and prices and prepares analyses and special reports on topics of current interest.

Release Day & Time:

U.S. API Weekly Crude Oil Stock inventor is released on Tuesday Night at 02:00 AM (IST), which gives a glimpse of the movement of the crude oil for the day trading session on Wednesday before releasing US Crude Oil inventory data, whereas US crude oil inventory data is released on Wednesday night between (08:00 PM to 09:00 PM). In case of any holiday in the US are any other factors, release date and time may vary.

Other important data like U.S. Gasoline Inventories, U.S. EIA Weekly Distillates Stocks, U.S. EIA Weekly Distillates Stocks are also released at the same time with US Crude oil inventory (EIA) on Wednesday.

Gasoline is generally used as fuel in vehicles and it is made from crude oil and other petroleum products.

Oil refineries companies and blending facilities produce motor gasoline to sell it at retail fuel stations.

Now the question is how it affects the crude oil price so simply to understand this logic we have a case here.

Case - US crude oil inventory fell and in numbers, it is less as compared to forecast so it means the price should move upside according to US crude oil inventory data but at the same time, gasoline inventory data rose which is a ready fuel to use in-vehicle engines it means supply is more than expectation, which will cap the upside movement of the crude oil price.

Conclusion:

You can check all these data and can keep yourself updated regularly by following the website: Investing.com under “Economic Calendar”.

The conclusion is that while analyzing US crude oil inventory data we have to analyze all other related inventory reports at the same time. If all the reports provide clear indications of demand and supply then we can decide whether we have to buy or sell. If data is mixed so it means that price will move in a range.