Crude Oil Inventories See Larger Than Expected Drop

The American Petroleum Institute (API) estimated that crude oil inventories in the United States fell by 1.455 million barrels for the week ending February 28. Analysts had expected a smaller 300,000-barrel draw. This offsets just a small part of the 12 million barrels of builds in U.S. crude oil inventories so far this year, according to Oilprice calculations of API data. Earlier this week, the Department of Energy (DoE) reported that crude oil inventories in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) stayed at 395.3 million barrels in the week ending…