Op-Ed Piece in Financial Times Re: Potential Oil Price Speak With Turmoil in the Mideast

Link here.

European crude oil inventories plunged in August, the last data available show, to their lowest in almost nine years due to a series of “supply-side factors”, according to the International Energy Agency. Among those production factors were the loss of Libyan supplies, North Sea production outages, pipeline sabotage in Nigeria and “the gradual redirection of Russian crude flows towards Asia."

Crude oil stocks are also low in Asia, and have fallen recently below the five-year average in the US.

The supply glitches continue to plague the market. Although Libya’s oil output has recovered to about 550,000 b/d, it remains well below the prewar level of 1.6m b/d. At the same time, oil production in Yemen and Syria has dropped by a combined 200,000 b/d due to unrest in both countries. In addition, production is running below the expected level in the North Sea, Nigeria and Azerbaijan. 

The story above says "crude oil stocks have fallen recently below the five-year average in the US." I must be reading the graph wrong, but it appears to me, crude oil stocks in US have never been higher.  I don't know about the rest of the data, and like I said, I'm probably wrong. But the graph suggests otherwise.