foreign news on july 10, a preliminary survey released on monday showed that us crude oil inventories are expected to increase last week, while gasoline and distillate inventories may decline.
the average estimate of five analysts surveyed was that u.s. crude inventories were expected to rise by about 200,000 barrels in the week to july 7.
the u.s. energy information administration (eia) previously announced that u.s. crude oil inventories fell by 1.5 million barrels to 452.2 million barrels in the week ended june 30. analysts had expected a decrease of 1 million barrels.
the american petroleum institute (api) will release the industry version of the crude oil inventory report at 4:30 beijing time on wednesday, and the eia will release the official version of the inventory report at 22:30 on wednesday.
analysts forecast that u.s. gasoline inventories were expected to fall by about 1.3 million barrels last week, while distillate inventories, which include diesel and heating oil, were expected to fall by about 400,000 barrels.
u.s. refinery capacity utilization was expected to rise by 0.5 percentage points last week to 91.1% in the week ended june 30.
