, Columnist
Oil's Big American Glut Is Resting Elsewhere
There's rather a lot hanging around as refined products, and abroad.
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Excess crude oil inventories in the U.S. are finally and clearly in retreat as OPEC's output agreement nears the end of its fourth month. But those oil bulls looking for higher prices shouldn't get too excited just yet -- the surplus may just be moving elsewhere.
True, the crude stockpile fell in each of the first three weeks of April, and the 3.64 million-barrel decline in the last of those was the biggest weekly drop of the year, according to the Energy Information Administration. Over the period, inventories were drawn down at an average rate of 326,000 barrels a day, and a further 63,000 barrels a day have been drawn from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) as part of a program of sales put in place last year.