LONDON: Northwest European gasoline refining margins rose on Wednesday as US inventories dropped.

US crude stocks, gasoline and distillate inventories fell last week, the Energy Information Administration said on Wednesday. US gasoline stocks fell by 3.1 million barrels in the week to 248.5 million barrels, the EIA said, compared with analysts' expectations for a 643,000-barrel drop in a Reuters poll.

Arrivals of European gasoline and gasoline component to the United States were seen at around 340,000 tonnes so far in July, compared with 1.1 million tonnes in the whole of June, Refinitiv Eikon data showed.

Total's benchmark refining indicator fell by almost 50% in the second quarter from a year earlier, the company said.

US oil refiners are expected to have about 4.1 million barrels per day (bpd) of capacity offline for the week ending July 17, increasing available refining capacity by 209,000 bpd from the previous week, research company IIR Energy said on Wednesday.

OPEC and allies such as Russia will ease record oil supply curbs from August as the global economy slowly recovers from the COVID-19 pandemic, Saudi energy minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman said on Wednesday.