EIA and API oil inventory reports: timing, how to read them and why oil jumps

The two weekly US oil inventory reports are the American Petroleum Institute (API) estimate, normally released on Tuesday afternoon New York time, and the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) Weekly Petroleum Status Report, normally released on Wednesday at 10:30 New York time. Both show how much crude oil and refined product is sitting in US storage and how that changed over the past week. Oil prices often jump within seconds of each release because traders compare the numbers with what was expected.

This guide goes into the reports themselves: what the figures mean, how the market reads them together, when the times shift, and how to size and manage a position around a release. For the wider picture of what drives crude, start with the oil trading guide; for the two benchmarks, see Brent vs WTI.

Why weekly inventories matter

Oil is a physical market. Producers pump it, refiners turn it into petrol, diesel and jet fuel, and whatever is not used straight away goes into tanks. Stocks are the buffer between supply and demand, so a change in stocks is one of the few regular, measurable signs of whether the market is tighter or looser than expected.

The United States is the world's largest oil consumer and a very large producer, and it publishes unusually detailed weekly data. Most other countries publish monthly figures, if at all. That makes the US weekly numbers the most frequent hard data point the global oil market gets, and they move both WTI and Brent, although WTI, priced at a US delivery point, usually reacts more directly.

Stocks are not a forecast. They describe the week that has just ended. Their value to traders lies in how they confirm or contradict the story the market already holds about supply and demand.

The two reports and their timing

API: the Tuesday estimate

The American Petroleum Institute is an industry body. Each week it compiles stock figures reported by its member companies and publishes them as its Weekly Statistical Bulletin, normally on Tuesday at around 16:30 New York time. The full bulletin goes to subscribers, but the headline numbers (crude, petrol, distillates and Cushing) are reported by news services within minutes.

Because the API data comes from a voluntary industry survey rather than the government's own collection, it is treated as a preview. It often points the same way as the EIA figures the next day, but the size, and sometimes the direction, can differ noticeably.

EIA: the Wednesday official report

The US Energy Information Administration is the statistical agency of the US Department of Energy. Its Weekly Petroleum Status Report is normally released on Wednesday at 10:30 a.m. Eastern time. It covers the week ending the previous Friday and is the figure the market treats as authoritative.

The report is detailed. Alongside stocks it includes production, imports, exports, refinery inputs and utilisation, and a measure called product supplied, which is used as a proxy for demand.

Holiday weeks and time zones

Both releases move when there is a US federal holiday early in the week. After a Monday holiday the API figures usually come out on Wednesday and the EIA report on Thursday, and around year-end the EIA has published on other days. The EIA posts its schedule, including holiday changes, on its website, and any decent economic calendar carries both releases.

Time zones catch people out. For most of the year 10:30 in New York is 15:30 in London and 16:30 in Central European time. For a few weeks in March and again between late October and early November, the US and Europe are on different daylight-saving schedules, and the release lands an hour earlier for European readers. The market hours tool shows sessions in your own time zone.

Natural gas has its own report: the EIA's weekly storage figures come out on Thursday, covered in the natural gas guide.

What is in the EIA report

You do not need to read every table. These are the lines the market concentrates on.

Commercial crude stocks

The headline figure is the change in US commercial crude oil inventories, excluding the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), in millions of barrels. A rise is a build; a fall is a draw. The SPR is the government's emergency stockpile and is reported separately, because releases from it are policy decisions rather than market signals.

Traders also compare the level with the average for the same week over the previous five years, because stocks have a seasonal rhythm. A draw in a week when stocks normally fall is less informative than the same draw in a week when they normally rise.

Cushing, Oklahoma

Cushing is the delivery point for the NYMEX WTI futures contract. Stocks there matter more for WTI than their size suggests. Very low Cushing stocks can tighten the front of the WTI futures curve; very high stocks, as in April 2020, can weigh on it heavily. A build in national crude stocks alongside a draw at Cushing is read differently from builds in both.

Petrol (gasoline) and distillates

Refined product stocks show the demand side. Distillates include diesel and heating oil. Large product draws suggest strong consumption or weak refinery output; large builds suggest the opposite. Petrol matters most in the US summer driving season, distillates in winter and whenever freight and industrial activity is in focus. The commodity seasonality guide covers those rhythms.

Refinery utilisation

This is the share of US refining capacity in use. Refiners are the buyers of crude, so when utilisation rises, crude tends to be drawn out of storage and product stocks rise; during spring and autumn maintenance the reverse happens. A crude build in a week when several refineries were shut for maintenance or by a storm is not necessarily a sign of weak demand.

Production, imports and exports

US crude production is reported weekly and rounded, and it is partly estimated, so small weekly changes are not very meaningful. Imports and exports, by contrast, can swing by large amounts from one week to the next because they depend on when tankers happen to arrive and leave. A single big build or draw is often explained almost entirely by a swing in net imports, which may reverse the following week.

Product supplied

Product supplied is the EIA's proxy for consumption: roughly, product leaving primary storage for use. It is noisy from week to week. Many analysts look at a four-week average rather than any single week.

How the market reads the numbers

Surprise against consensus

Before each report, news agencies poll analysts for their forecast of the crude, petrol and distillate changes. The consensus figure is what is already in the price. What moves the market is the gap between consensus and the actual figure, which is the same logic described in how economic data moves forex.

So a draw can be bearish if the market expected a much bigger draw, and a build can be bullish if a much larger one was forecast. The API number the evening before also shifts expectations: if the API showed a big build, part of that may already be priced by Wednesday morning, and the EIA figure is judged against both.

Reading the whole report, not one line

The first move after the headline usually reacts to the crude change. Within minutes, traders look at the detail and the price can reverse. Common combinations:

• Crude build with large product draws: refiners may have run less, but consumption looks firm. Often read as less bearish than the headline suggests.
• Crude draw explained by a jump in exports: the oil left the US but did not disappear from the world market. Often read as less bullish than the headline.
• Builds across crude and products with falling product supplied: the clearest sign of soft demand that week.
• Cushing draw with a national build: can support WTI relative to Brent even while the headline looks bearish.

None of these has a fixed outcome. The same report can be read differently depending on what the market is worried about at the time: in a period dominated by OPEC+ supply news or recession fears, inventory data can be close to ignored.

Worked example: reading a report

Illustrative figures only, not a real week.

• Consensus: crude stocks to fall by 1.5 million barrels; petrol to fall by 1.0 million; distillates to fall by 0.5 million.
• API the night before: crude up 1.2 million.
• EIA actual: crude up 2.0 million; petrol down 3.0 million; distillates down 1.8 million; Cushing down 0.6 million; refinery utilisation down 1.5 percentage points; net imports up sharply.

Read one line at a time, the crude figure is a 3.5 million barrel miss against consensus (2.0 actual versus 1.5 forecast draw, so 2.0 + 1.5 = 3.5). That is the number the first algorithmic move reacts to, and crude may dip.

Read as a whole, though: the API had already signalled a build, so part of the surprise was priced the night before. Products drew far more than expected, utilisation fell (so refiners took less crude), net imports rose (a timing effect), and Cushing drew. A trader could reasonably conclude that the crude build says more about refinery timing and tanker arrivals than about weak demand. The price might recover the dip within the hour, or it might not, if the market was already focused on something else. The point of the exercise is understanding why the first move is often unreliable.

Volatility around the release

What tends to happen

In the seconds after 10:30 on a Wednesday, oil CFD prices can move sharply as algorithms react to the headline. In the following minutes there is often a second phase as people digest the detail. Typical features:

• Wider spreads. Liquidity providers pull back just before the release and widen quotes, as described in why spreads widen. Your platform's typical spread can be a fraction of what you pay at 10:30.
• Gaps between prices. Price can jump from one level to another with no trades in between, which means stops and pending orders can be filled beyond their level. See slippage explained.
• Whipsaws. The first move and the second move often point in opposite directions.

The size of the move varies a great deal. In quiet periods the reaction can be small; when inventories are central to the market's story, it can be large. There is no reliable fixed number to plan around, which is why the sizing section below works from a deliberately wide range.

The Tuesday evening move

The API release comes after the US cash equity session and in thin evening trading for European and Asian traders. Moves can be abrupt because fewer orders sit on the book. Anyone holding oil overnight should know the time it lands.

Sizing a position through a release

The key question is not where your stop is but how far price could travel through it. A stop is an instruction to close at the next available price, not a promise of that price.

Worked example: oil CFD around the EIA report

Illustrative numbers. Your account is 10,000 US dollars and you risk 1% per trade, so 100 dollars. Your provider's US crude CFD has a contract size of 100 barrels, so a 1 dollar move in the price is worth 100 dollars per contract, and the minimum trade is 0.1 contracts. Contract sizes vary between providers; check yours with the guide to CFD contract specifications.

You plan a long position with a stop 1.20 dollars below entry.

• Risk per contract at the stop: 1.20 × 100 = 120 dollars.
• Position size: 100 ÷ 120 = 0.83 contracts, rounded down to 0.8.
• Planned loss if filled at the stop: 1.20 × 100 × 0.8 = 96 dollars.

Now suppose you hold through 10:30 and the price drops 1.80 dollars in a few seconds, skipping your stop level, and you are filled 0.60 dollars beyond it.

• Actual loss: (1.20 + 0.60) × 100 × 0.8 = 144 dollars, or 1.44% of the account, before the wider spread.

Alternatives a disciplined trader might consider:

• Halve the size for trades held through the release. At 0.4 contracts, the same slipped fill costs (1.80 × 100 × 0.4) = 72 dollars.
• Size for a wider assumed move. If you assume a possible 2.00 dollar adverse move, 100 ÷ (2.00 × 100) = 0.5 contracts.
• Stay flat through the release and reassess afterwards. Many short-term traders treat the minutes around 10:30 on Wednesday as a no-entry zone.

The position size calculator for instruments does this arithmetic, and the margin calculator shows the cash needed. Leverage on oil CFDs for retail clients in the EU and UK is capped at 10:1, as explained in the guide to ESMA leverage limits.

Pending orders near the release

Entry stop orders placed just above and below the current price to catch a breakout from the report are a common idea. In practice the spread widens first, which can trigger one side on the spread alone; then a whipsaw can trigger the other side. If you use them, place them where a fill would still make sense, and remember that a fill in a fast market can be worse than the order price.

Using the reports without trading the release

Most traders do not need to trade the first seconds. The reports are more useful as context:

• Tracking the trend in stocks. Four or more consecutive weeks of draws, or builds, tell you more than any single week.
• Comparing with the five-year range. Stocks well below the seasonal average point to a tight market; well above, a loose one.
• Watching the products. Distillate stocks matter for diesel-heavy demand and are often discussed as a sign of industrial activity.
• Checking what the market cares about. If oil barely reacts to a large surprise, that tells you the market's attention is elsewhere, perhaps on OPEC decisions or geopolitics.

There is also a link to currencies. Oil-exporter currencies such as the Canadian dollar and Norwegian krone often move with crude over time, though the relationship is loose and changes. The currency correlation guide explains why correlations are not stable.

Common mistakes

• Trading the headline only. The crude figure is the first thing the algorithms see, but the detail often reverses the first move.
• Ignoring the API. By Wednesday the API figure has already shifted expectations. A large EIA build after a large API build is not much of a surprise.
• Forgetting holiday weeks. Getting caught by a Thursday release you thought was on Wednesday is avoidable; check the schedule.
• Getting the time wrong across daylight-saving changes. In March and around the end of October and start of November, European times shift for a few weeks.
• Assuming the stop limits the loss. In a fast move the fill can be well beyond it. Size for the move, not the stop.
• Over-reading one week. Imports, exports and product supplied are noisy. A single number rarely changes the medium-term picture.
• Holding oil CFDs through releases without knowing the contract. Point value, minimum size and expiry or roll rules differ between providers; check them before the release, not during.

Remember the backdrop: most retail CFD accounts lose money, and a volatile, scheduled release concentrates that risk into a few minutes. The risk warning sets out the general risks of leveraged trading.

Frequently asked questions

What time is the EIA crude oil inventory report?

The EIA's Weekly Petroleum Status Report is normally released on Wednesday at 10:30 a.m. Eastern (New York) time, which is usually 15:30 in London. In weeks with a US federal holiday early in the week it is typically moved to Thursday, and around year-end it can move to other days. The EIA publishes its release schedule on its website.

What time is the API report?

The American Petroleum Institute normally releases its weekly stock figures on Tuesday at about 16:30 New York time, which is usually 21:30 in London. After a Monday holiday it usually moves to Wednesday. Headline numbers are carried by news services and economic calendars.

What is the difference between the API and EIA reports?

The API figure is an industry estimate built from reports by its member companies and is published first. The EIA figure is the official government data and is more detailed, covering production, imports, exports, refinery runs and product supplied. The two often point the same way but can differ, and the market treats the EIA number as the authoritative one.

Is a crude inventory draw always bullish for oil?

No. Price reacts to the difference between the actual number and the consensus forecast, and to the detail behind it. A draw smaller than expected can push prices lower, and a draw caused by a surge in exports may be discounted. Product stocks, Cushing and refinery utilisation can all change how the headline is read.

Why does oil move so sharply at 10:30 on Wednesday?

Many participants react at the same moment, much of it automatically, while liquidity providers widen spreads and pull orders in the seconds around the release. That combination produces fast moves and gaps between prices. The first move is often followed by a second, sometimes opposite, move as traders digest the full report.

Should I close my oil position before the EIA report?

That is a personal risk decision, not something this guide can answer for you. What you can do is work out in advance what a fast move of, say, one or two dollars would cost on your current size, and decide whether you are comfortable with that. If not, reduce the size or stay out until after the release.