US weekly crude oil inventories rose by 11.4 million barrels in the week ending 20 February. This follows a rise of -0.609 million barrels in the prior week.<\/p>\n
The data comes from the American Petroleum Institute\u2019s weekly report. It shows the latest change was higher than the previous reported figure.<\/p>\n
We’ve seen a huge build in crude inventories, hitting 11.4 million barrels last week. This is a sharp reversal from the small draw we saw before and points to a significant oversupply in the market. The immediate reaction will be bearish, likely pushing oil prices lower.<\/p>\n
This inventory swell is happening as U.S. refinery utilization rates have dipped to around 86% for seasonal maintenance. At the same time, domestic production remains robust, hovering near a record 13.3 million barrels per day according to the latest government data. This combination of lower processing and high output is what’s causing stocks to build so quickly.<\/p>\n
We should consider buying put options on WTI or selling front-month futures contracts to capitalize on expected price drops. Bear put spreads for the March and April expiration dates could be a cost-effective way to express this negative view. This strategy allows us to profit from a moderate decline in prices while limiting our upfront cost.<\/p>\n
We saw a similar pattern of surprise inventory builds back in the spring of 2025 when refineries were slow to come back online from turnarounds. At that time, front-month crude prices fell over 8% in the following two weeks before demand began to recover. That historical precedent suggests this current weakness could persist for several weeks.<\/p>\n
All eyes will now be on the official EIA inventory report to confirm the size of this build; a similarly large number will accelerate the sell-off. We are also watching the market structure shift deeper into contango, where later-dated contracts trade at a premium to the front month. This signals that the market is well-supplied and further confirms the bearish outlook.<\/p>\n
Create your live VT Markets account<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0start trading<\/a>\u00a0now. <\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" US crude inventories surged 11.4 million barrels week ending February 20, following prior week\u2019s 0.609 million-barrel increase.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":62,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42752","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-updates"],"acf":{"acf_article_selection_author":null},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vtmarkets.com\/en-asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42752","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vtmarkets.com\/en-asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vtmarkets.com\/en-asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vtmarkets.com\/en-asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/62"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vtmarkets.com\/en-asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42752"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.vtmarkets.com\/en-asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42752\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vtmarkets.com\/en-asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vtmarkets.com\/en-asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vtmarkets.com\/en-asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}