Crude Oil Inventories: Snapshot

I don't really care for these snapshots. Because that's all they are -- simply snapshots.

But I am ready to sign off for the day and want to leave an "oil story" at the top of the blog.

Market Realist is reporting:

On August 14, the DOE reported a decrease in crude oil inventories of 2.8 million barrels. In contrast, analysts actually expected a crude oil inventory draw of 1.5 million barrels. The larger-than-expected decrease in inventories was a positive signal for oil prices.

But:

... crude inventories had been much higher than where they were in the past five years at the same point in the year (though they’ve recently closed in under comparable 2012 levels). There’s been a surge in U.S. crude oil production over the past several years. Inventories had accrued because much of the excess refinery and takeaway capacity soaked up, and it took time and capital for more to come online. This caused the spread between WTI Cushing (the benchmark U.S. crude, which represents light sweet crude priced at the storage hub of Cushing, Oklahoma) and Brent crude (the benchmark international crude, which represents light sweet crude priced in the North Sea) to blow out. However, over the course of 2013, this has closed in considerably, so that the two benchmarks trade almost in line again.

Most of this is already known by regular readers.

Thank you. By they way, my page views have gone over the 5-million mark. I lost interest in the number of page views when I lost viewers due to a hacker, but the blog is gradually coming back. 

Good luck to everyone.