NYMEX WTI continues to swing upward this morning for a fourth straight session with prices trading fairly above $62/bbl, following a mixed inventory report from the American Petroleum Institute (API). Meanwhile, recent reports suggest that rising Ukrainian drone attacks on Russia’s Oil refineries have cut down the country’s domestic crude processing while leading to a surge in overseas flows of unprocessed Oil, ING's commodity experts Ewa Manthey and Warren Patterson note.

Crude Oil inventories increase

"Numbers overnight from the API show that crude Oil inventories increased by 2.8m barrels over the last week, well above the average market forecast for a build of 497k barrels. However, stocks at the WTI delivery hub, Cushing, fell by 1.2m barrels. Looking at refined products, gasoline inventories fell by 1.2m barrels, while distillate stocks declined by 1.8m barrels. The decline in refined product stocks provided mixed signals on energy consumption in the country. The more widely followed EIA weekly inventory report will be released later today."

"Meanwhile, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) released its latest Short Term Energy Outlook yesterday, raising its US crude Oil production growth estimates for both this year and next. The EIA now expects US crude Oil production to average around 13.53m b/d in 2025, compared to a previous estimate of around 13.44m b/d."

"For 2026, the EIA expects US Oil supply to average around 13.51m b/d, compared to its previous forecast of 13.3m b/d. On the other hand, the EIA estimates US petroleum consumption to remain flat at around 20.5m b/d compared to its earlier expectations of consumption increasing to 20.6m b/d in 2026."