US crude supplies falling at a record pace, down 17.4% YoY; gasoline output at a 22 month high; record gasoline demand The Latest US Oil Supply and Disposition Data from the EIA, RJS, Marketwatch 666 US oil data from the US Energy Information Administration for the week ending July 2nd showed that even after a sizeble decrease in our oil exports and a modest decrease in our refinery throughput, we still needed to withdraw oil from our stored commercial crude supplies for the seventh consecutive week, and for the 23rd time in the past thirty-four weeks….our imports of crude oil fell by an average of 532,000 barrels per day to an average of 5,875,000 barrels per day, after falling by an average of 536,000 barrels per day during the prior week,
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US crude supplies falling at a record pace, down 17.4% YoY; gasoline output at a 22 month high; record gasoline demand
The Latest US Oil Supply and Disposition Data from the EIA, RJS, Marketwatch 666
US oil data from the US Energy Information Administration for the week ending July 2nd showed that even after a sizeble decrease in our oil exports and a modest decrease in our refinery throughput, we still needed to withdraw oil from our stored commercial crude supplies for the seventh consecutive week, and for the 23rd time in the past thirty-four weeks….our imports of crude oil fell by an average of 532,000 barrels per day to an average of 5,875,000 barrels per day, after falling by an average of 536,000 barrels per day during the prior week, while our exports of crude oil fell by an average of 1,089,000 barrels per day to an average of 2,628,000 barrels per day during the week, which 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 July 2nd, 557,000 more barrels per day than the net of our imports minus our exports during the prior week…over the same period, the production of crude oil from US wells was reportedly 200,000 barrels per day higher at 11,300,000 barrels per day, and hence our daily supply of oil from the net of our trade in oil and from well production appears to total an average of 14,547,000 barrels per day during this reporting week…
Meanwhile, US oil refineries reported they were processing 16,115,000 barrels of crude per day during the week ending July 2nd, 164,000 fewer barrels per day than the amount of oil they used during the prior week, while over the same period the EIA’s surveys indicated that a net of 1,150,000 barrels of oil per day were being pulled out of 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, from storage, and from oilfield production was 418,000 barrels per day less than 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 (+418,000) 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 fudge factor that they label in their footnotes as “unaccounted for crude oil”, thus suggesting there must have been a error or errors of that magnitude in this week’s oil supply & demand figures that we have just transcribed…..furthermore, since last week’s EIA fudge factor was at (+1,350,000) barrels per day, that means there was a 932,000 barrel per day balance sheet difference in the crude oil fudge figure from a week ago, thus rendering the week over week supply and demand changes that we have just transcribed meaningless…. however, since most everyone treats these weekly EIA reports as gospel and since these figures often drive oil pricing and hence decisions to drill or complete wells, we’ll continue to report them as they’re published, just as they’re watched & believed to be 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 6,492,000 barrels per day last week, which was 2.2% less than the 6,636,000 barrel per day average that we were importing over the same four-week period last year… the 1,150,000 barrel per day net withdrawal from our crude inventories included a 981,000 barrel per day withdrawal from our commercially available stocks of crude oil, and a 169,000 barrel per day withdrawal from our Strategic Petroleum Reserve, space in which has been leased for commercial purposes…over the past four weeks, total US crude inventories have been falling at a 1,205,000 barrel per day clip, the largest four-week decline of crude supplies in EIA records going back to 1982….this week’s crude oil production was reported to be 200,000 barrels per day higher at 11,300,000 barrels per day because the rounded estimate of the output from wells in the lower 48 states was 200,000 barrels per day higher at 10,900,000 barrels per day, while an 10,000 barrel per day decrease in Alaska’s oil production to 438,000 barrels per day had no impact on the rounded national 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 13.7% below that of our production peak, but 34.1% 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…
Meanwhile, US oil refineries were operating at 92.2% of their capacity while using those 16,115,000 barrels of crude per day during the week ending July 2nd, down from 92.9% of capacity the prior week, and a bit below normal for summertime operations…while the 16,115,000 barrels per day of oil that were refined this week were 12.3% higher than the 14,347,000 barrels of crude that were being processed daily during the pandemic impacted week ending July 3rd of last year, they were still 7.6% below the 17,438,000 barrels of crude that were being processed daily during the week ending July 5th, 2019, when US refineries were operating at a close to summertime normal 94.7% of capacity…
Even with this week’s decrease in the amount of oil being refined, the gasoline output from our refineries was much higher, increasing by 976,000 barrels per day to9,578,000 barrels per day during the week ending July 2nd, after our gasoline output had decreased by 749,000 barrels per day over the prior week…since this week’s gasoline production was among the highest on record, it was thus 16.7% higher than the 9,045,000 barrels of gasoline that were being produced daily over the same week of last year, and 1.3% higher than the gasoline production of 10,418,000 barrels per day during the week ending July 5th, 2019….meanwhile, our refineries’ production of distillate fuels (diesel fuel and heat oil) decreased by 62,000 barrels per day to 4,967,000 barrels per day, after our distillates output had decreased by 83,000 barrels per day over the prior week…while this week’s distillates output was still 4.4% more than the 4,756,000 barrels of distillates that were being produced daily during the week ending July 3rd, 2020, it was 7.3% below the 5,358,000 barrels of distillates that were being produced daily during the week ending July 5th, 2019..,…
Even with the big increase in our gasoline production, our supply of gasoline in storage at the end of the week decreased for the fourth time in fourteen weeks, and for the 20th time in thirty-four weeks, falling by 6,075,000 barrels to 235,497,000 barrels during the week ending July 2nd, after our gasoline inventories had increased by 1,522,000 barrels over the prior week...our gasoline supplies decreased this week because the amount of gasoline supplied to US users increased by 870,000 barrels per day to a record 10,043,000 barrels per day, and because our exports of gasoline jumped by 402,000 barrels per day to 848,000 barrels per day, while our imports of gasoline rose by 226,000 barrels per day to 1,016,000 barrels per day…after this week’s inventory decrease, our gasoline supplies were 6.4% lower than last July 3rd’s gasoline inventories of 251,682,000 barrels, and about 2% below the five year average of our gasoline supplies for this time of the year…
Meanwhile, even with the decrease in our distillates production, our supplies of distillate fuels increased for the fourth time in thirteen weeks and for the 14th time in 29 weeks, rising by 1,616,000 barrels to 138,692,000 barrels during the week ending July 2nd, after our distillates supplies had decreased by 859,000 barrels during the prior week….our distillates supplies rose this week because the amount of distillates supplied to US markets, an indicator of our domestic demand, fell by 330,000 barrels per day to 3,840,000 barrels per day, and because our exports of distillates fell by 201,000 barrels per day to 1,027,000 barrels per day while our imports of distillates fell by 114,000 barrels per day to 131,000 barrels per day while …but after nine inventory decreases over the past thirteen weeks, our distillate supplies at the end of the week were 21.8% below the 177,262,000 barrels of distillates that we had in storage on July 3rd, 2020, and still about 6% below the five year average of distillates stocks for this time of the year…
Finally, even with the drop in our oil exports and the increase in our oil production, our commercial supplies of crude oil in storage fell for twelveth time in the past twenty weeks and for the 28th time in the past year, decreasing by 6,866,000 barrels over the week, from 452,342,000 barrels on June 25th to 445,476,000 barrels on July 2nd, after our crude supplies had decreased by 6,718,000 barrels the prior week….with this week’s decrease, our commercial crude oil inventories fell to about 7% below the most recent five-year average of crude oil supplies for this time of year, but were still 29.3% above the average of our crude oil stocks as of the the 1st weekend of July 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, our commercial crude oil supplies as of this July 2nd were 17.4% less than the 539,181,000 barrels of oil we had in commercial storage on July 3rd of 2020, and are now 2.9% less than the 458,992,000 barrels of oil that we had in storage on July 5th of 2019, but are still 9.9% more than the 405,248,000 barrels of oil we had in commercial storage on July 6th of 2018…