American crude production dropped last week alongside falling demand for travel fuels derived from oil, the latest government data show.

Production for the week ended Aug. 19 declined by 100,000 b/d to 12.0 million b/d, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) said Wednesday in its Weekly Petroleum Status Report. Output had reached a pandemic-era high of 12.2 million b/d earlier in the summer, though it remained roughly 1 million b/d below pre-coronavirus peak in early 2020.

With production down last week, U.S. commercial crude inventories, excluding those in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, decreased by 3.3 million bbl from the previous week, EIA said. Still, at 421.7 million bbl, stocks were about 6% below the five-year average.

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