Morning Heating Oil Market Report

March heating oil prices marked their high of the morning hours overnight session on the open and traded lower from that point. Yesterday's EIA inventory data showed an unexpectedly large distillate inventory build of 1.174 million barrels. Current inventories stand at 17.782 million barrels below last year but 2.099 million above the five year average. Distillate imports came in at 111,000 barrels per day compared to 192,000 barrels the previous week. Average total distillate demand for the past four weeks was down 1.37% compared to last year. Heating oil stocks registered their lowest inventory level for this week of the year since 2008. EIA heating oil stocks rose 586,000 barrels and are 7.218 million barrels below last year.