Brent climbs amid US crude stock decline

The front-month ICE Brent crude futures rose by $0.15/bbl in the first hour after the official weekly oil figures from the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) were released today.

PHOTO: Oil refinery and pipeline in the desert during sunset. Getty Images

Commercial crude oil inventories in the US dropped by 3.74 million bbls to 436 million bbls in the week ending 19 July.

The stocks dropped amid higher US crude oil exports. The country's crude oil exports increased by 222,000 b/d to 4.19 million b/d on the week.

Refinery crude runs dropped by 521,000 b/d as the country's refinery utilisation fell by 2.1 percentage points to 91.6% last week – the lowest in ten weeks.

Gasoline stocks dropped by 5.57 million bbls on the week to 227 million bbls – the lowest in nine weeks.

Distillate stocks, which include diesel and gasoil, dropped by 2.75 million bbls to 125 million bbls.

By Debarati Bhattacharjee

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