DOE Energy Inventories - Big Build but moderate downward spike with Iran-Gulf bullish fundamentals

Today wednesday Jan 11th at 15:30 GMT (10:30 EST) the Department of Energy's Inventories for Crude and other Energy commodities was released. There was quite a decent build of nearly 4000k however the resulting spike down on the oversupply of Crude was rather modest considering how large this build was. In the past builds of 2500k would have caused at least 100 ticks or $1 move lower on the active Crude Futures contract.

Much of this could be do to the continuing situation in the Gulf with Iran. The US and Europe are working to impose sanctions on Iran because of their Uranium Enrichment program. The governments of these countries were going to start blocking the bank acccounts of companies that do business transactions with Iran. So far China, Russia and north korea and perhaps a few others still get oil from Iran but this has reduced their customers. So Iran has been saying they are going to do military training in the gulf and they might actually block the Straight of Hormuz and cut off the oil supply from the rest of the Gulf states to the world. Goverments have agreed to release oil reserve stock piles if this happens. All of this has push the Black stuff higher, so a bearish print on this number was only an opportunity to buy into the uptrend, and soon later the Crude oil future was higher.

A few minutes before the release Russia announced it opposes oil sanctions against Iran, even if Tehran continues enriching Uranium.

Here the figures:

DOE U.S. Crude Oil Inventory
Estimates: Median 1000k Average 854k Range -2750k to +3000k
Actual: +4958k Prior: +2209k No Revisions
DOE U.S. Distillate Inventory
Estimates: Median +2250k Average +2142k Range +500k to +4500k
Actual: +3985k Prior: +3224k No Revisions
DOE U.S. Gasoline Inventory
Estimates: Median +2250k Average +2100k Range 0k to +3800k
Actual: +3610k Prior: +2479k No Revisions
DOE U.S. Refinery Utilization
Estimates: Median +0.5% Average +0.3% Range -0.5% to 1.00%
Actual: +0.6% Prior: +0.8% No Revisions
DOE Cushing OK Crude Inventory
Actual: -1991k Prior: -613k No Revisions
DOE Crude Oil Implied Demand
Actual: 15043 Prior: 14559 No Revisions
DOE Distillate Implied Demand
Actual: 4350.7 Prior: 4600.4 No Revisions
DOE Gasoline Implied Demand
Actual: 8701.9 Prior: 9078.6

Here is the 1 minute chart of the Crude Oil Future for Feb 2012 delivery:

and here a chart of the stock EXXON at the same time, interestingly it did not bounce like the Crude Oil Future did and continued down further. Other energy stocks like Cheasapeake and Devon energy also had an initial spike down but quite muted and were quick to rebound even before the future did. Correlations often shift depending on all those other things involved in stocks like p/e ratios, dividends, whether the CEO is buying or selling....etc