Focus on Fracking: gasoline supplies lowest since November 2017 despite gasoline production above prepandemic levels; Focus on Fracking, Commenter and Blogger RJS US oil data from the US Energy Information Administration for the week ending October 29th indicated that after a modest increase in our oil production and only minor changes to our oil imports, our oil exports, and our refining, we had surplus oil to add to our stored commercial crude supplies for the fifth time in six weeks and for the for the tenth time in the past thirty-one weeks . . . our imports of crude oil fell by an average of 83,000 barrels per day to an average of 6,254,000 barrels per day, after rising by an average of 430,000 barrels per day during the prior week, while
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Focus on Fracking: gasoline supplies lowest since November 2017 despite gasoline production above prepandemic levels; Focus on Fracking, Commenter and Blogger RJS
US oil data from the US Energy Information Administration for the week ending October 29th indicated that after a modest increase in our oil production and only minor changes to our oil imports, our oil exports, and our refining, we had surplus oil to add to our stored commercial crude supplies for the fifth time in six weeks and for the for the tenth time in the past thirty-one weeks . . . our imports of crude oil fell by an average of 83,000 barrels per day to an average of 6,254,000 barrels per day, after rising by an average of 430,000 barrels per day during the prior week, while our exports of crude oil fell by an average of 138,000 barrels per day to an average of 2,787,000 barrels per day during the week, which together meant that our effective trade in oil worked out to a net import average of 3,247,000 barrels of per day during the week ending October 29th, 221,000 fewer barrels per day than the net of our imports minus our exports during the prior week . . . over the same period, production of crude oil from US wells was reportedly 200,000 barrels per day higher at 11,500,000 barrels per day, and hence our daily supply of oil from the net of our international trade in oil and from domestic well production appears to have totaled an average of 14,747,000 barrels per day during the cited reporting week…
Meanwhile, US oil refineries reported they were processing an average of 15,023,000 barrels of crude per day during the week ending October 29th, 25,000 fewer barrels per day than the amount of oil they processed during the prior week, while over the same period the EIA’s surveys indicated that a net of 235,000 barrels of oil per day were being added to the supplies of oil stored in the US . . . so based on that reported & estimated data, this week’s crude oil figures from the EIA appear to indicate that our total working supply of oil from net imports and from oilfield production was 511,000 barrels per day less than what was added to storage plus what our oil refineries reported they used during the week . . . to account for that disparity between the apparent supply of oil and the apparent disposition of it, the EIA just plugged a (+511,000) barrel per day figure onto line 13 of the weekly U.S. Petroleum Balance Sheet to make the reported data for the daily supply of oil and the consumption of it balance out, essentially a balance sheet fudge factor that they label in their footnotes as “unaccounted for crude oil”, thus suggesting there must have been a error or omission of that magnitude in this week’s oil supply & demand figures that we have just transcribed . . . however, since most everyone treats these weekly EIA reports as gospel and since these figures often drive oil pricing (like Wednesday’s $3.05 a barrel drop), and hence decisions to drill or complete wells, we’ll continue to report this data just as it’s published, and just as it’s watched & believed to be reasonably accurate by most everyone in the industry….(for more on how this weekly oil data is gathered, and the possible reasons for that “unaccounted for” oil, see this EIA explainer)….
Further details from the weekly Petroleum Status Report (pdf) indicate that the 4 week average of our oil imports fell to an average of 6,061,000 barrels per day last week, which was still 14.9% more than the 5,274,000 barrel per day average that we were importing over the same four-week period last year . . . the 235,000 barrel per day net increase in our crude inventories came as 470,000 barrels per day were added to our commercially available stocks of crude oil, which in turn was partly offset by a 235,000 barrels per day withdrawal of oil that had been stored in our Strategic Petroleum Reserve, part of an emergency loan of oil to Exxon in the wake of hurricane Ida . . . this week’s crude oil production was reported to be 200,000 barrels per day higher at 11,500,000 barrels per day as the EIA’s rounded estimate of the output from wells in the lower 48 states was 200,000 barrels per day higher at 11,100,000 barrels per day, while an 8,000 barrel per day decrease in Alaska’s oil production to 434,000 barrels per day had no impact on the reported rounded national production total . . . US crude oil production had hit a pre-pandemic record high of 13,100,000 barrels per day during the week ending March 13th 2020, so this week’s reported oil production figure was 12.2% below that of our pre-pandemic production peak, but 36.4% above the interim low of 8,428,000 barrels per day that US oil production had fallen to during the last week of June of 2016…
US oil refineries were operating at 86.3% of their capacity while using those 15,023,000 barrels of crude per day during the week ending October 29th, up from 85.1% of capacity the prior week, but below normal utilization for autumn refinery operations…the 15,023,000 barrels per day of oil that were refined this week were 10.9% more barrels than the 13,552,000 barrels of crude that were being processed daily during the pandemic impacted week ending October 30th of last year, but 4.7% less than the 15,761,000 barrels of crude that were being processed daily during the week ending November 1st, 2019, when US refineries were operating at what was then also a below normal 86.0% of capacity…
Despite the modest decrease in the amount of oil being refined this week, the gasoline output from our refineries was somewhat higher, increasing by 104,000 barrels per day to10,176,000 barrels per day during the week ending October 29th, after our gasoline output had increased by 12,000 barrels per day over the prior week . . . this week’s gasoline production was also 10.7% more than the 9,072,000 barrels of gasoline that were being produced daily over the same week of last year, and 1.4% more than the gasoline production of 10,036,000 barrels per day during the week ending November 1st, 2019 . . . at the same time, our refineries’ production of distillate fuels (diesel fuel and heat oil) increased by 252,000 barrels per day to 4,833,000 barrels per day, after our distillates output had increased by 164,000 barrels per day over the prior week…after this week’s increase, our distillates output was 13.1% more than the 4,275,000 barrels of distillates that were being produced daily during the week ending October 30th, 2020, and only 0.9% less than the 4,875,000 barrels of distillates that were being produced daily during the week ending November 1st, 2019..
Despite the increase in our gasoline production, our supply of gasoline in storage at the end of the week decreased for the seventh time in ten weeks, and for the sixteenth time in twenty-eight weeks, falling by 1,488,000 barrels to a 47 month low of 214,258,000 barrels during the week ending October 29th, after our gasoline inventories had decreased by 1.993,000 barrels over the prior week . . . our gasoline supplies decreased again this week because the amount of gasoline supplied to US users rose by 181,000 barrels per day to 504,000 barrels per day, even as our imports of gasoline rose by 174,000 barrels per day to 667,000 barrels per day, while our exports of gasoline fell by 53,000 barrels per day to 760,000 barrels per day . . . after this week’s inventory decrease, our gasoline supplies were 9.4% lower than last October 30th’s gasoline inventories of 227,665,000 barrels, and about 3% below the five year average of our gasoline supplies for this time of the year…
With the big increase in our distillates production, our supplies of distillate fuels increased for the second time in ten weeks and for the 10th time in 30 weeks, rising by 2,160,000 barrels to 127,122,000 barrels during the week ending October 29th, after our distillates supplies had decreased by 432,000 barrels during the prior week . . . our distillates supplies also rose this week because the amount of distillates supplied to US markets, an indicator of our domestic demand, fell by 183,000 barrels per day to 3,686,000 barrels per day, while our imports of distillates fell by 135,000 barrels per day to 190,000 barrels per day, and while our exports of distillates fell by 71,000 barrels per day to 1,028,000 barrels per day . . . but after twenty inventory decreases over the past thirty weeks, our distillate supplies at the end of the week were 17.8% below the 154,644,000 barrels of distillates that we had in storage on October 30th, 2020, and about 5% below the five year average of distillates stocks for this time of the year…
Meanwhile, after this week’s increase in our oil production, our commercial supplies of crude oil in storage rose for the seventh time in the past twenty-three weeks and for the 19th time in the past year, increasing by 3,290,000 barrels over the week, from 430,812,000 barrels on October 22nd to 434,102,000 barrels on October 29th, after our commercial crude supplies had increased by 4,268,000 barrels over the prior week . . . after this week’s increase, our commercial crude oil inventories remained about 6% below the most recent five-year average of crude oil supplies for this time of year, but were still more than 28% above the average of our crude oil stocks as of the last weekend of October over the 5 years at the beginning of the past decade, with the disparity between those comparisons arising because it wasn’t until early 2015 that our oil inventories first topped 400 million barrels….since our crude oil inventories had jumped to record highs during the Covid lockdowns of last spring and remained elevated for most of the year after that, our commercial crude oil supplies as of this October 29th were 10.4% less than the 484,429,000 barrels of oil we had in commercial storage on October 30th of 2020, and are now 2.8% less than the 446,782,000 barrels of oil that we had in storage on November 1st of 2019, but are still 0.5% more than the 431,787,000 barrels of oil we had in commercial storage on November 2nd of 2018…
Finally, with our inventory of crude oil and our supplies of all products made from oil still near multi year lows, we are continuing to track the total of all U.S. Stocks of Crude Oil and Petroleum Products, including those in the SPR . . . the EIA’s data shows that total oil and oil product inventories, including those in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and those held by the oil industry, fell by 1,016,000 barrels this week, from 1,847,479,000 barrels on October 22nd to 1,846,463,000 barrels on October 29th, but they are still 4,836,000 barrels higher than the six year low of five weeks earlier…