The amount of crude oil stocks went up surprisingly by 3.3 million barrels in the U.S. in the past week but crude in storage at the Cushing hub in Oklahoma continued to decline.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration reported Wednesday a tightening of the U.S. oil market supply with stocks in Cushing at their lowest level in three years.
The EIA reported stocks at Cushing were down to 26.4 million barrels from 27.3 million a week ago. That’s a slide of 0.9 million barrels.
A year ago, Cushing had 60.9 million barrels so the decline in crude over the past year has been 56.6% according to the EIA.
Cushing held 47.7 million barrels of crude oil two years ago. Since then, the decrease has totaled 44.7%.