“US crude supplies at a 23 month low, gasoline supplies at a 22 month low,” Focus on Fracking, Blogger and Commenter RJS The Latest US Oil Supply and Disposition Data from the EIA US oil data from the US Energy Information Administration for the week ending September 3rd indicated that after major decreases in our oilfield production, our refinery throughput, our oil imports and our oil exports due to Hurricane Ida, we needed to withdraw oil from our stored commercial crude supplies for the fourteenth time in sixteen weeks, and for the 30th time in the past forty-two weeks . . . our imports of crude oil fell by an average of 531,000 barrels per day to an average of 5,810,000 barrels per day, after rising by an average of 183,000 barrels per
Topics:
run75441 considers the following as important: Focus on Fracking, Gasoline and Oil Supplies, Hot Topics, RJS, US/Global Economics
This could be interesting, too:
Joel Eissenberg writes The business of aging
Angry Bear writes And It Makes No Difference Whether the Needed Fifth Vote is Missing Because . . .
Angry Bear writes A Proposal to Address the Housing Crisis
Joel Eissenberg writes The Administrative state
“US crude supplies at a 23 month low, gasoline supplies at a 22 month low,” Focus on Fracking, Blogger and Commenter RJS
The Latest US Oil Supply and Disposition Data from the EIA
US oil data from the US Energy Information Administration for the week ending September 3rd indicated that after major decreases in our oilfield production, our refinery throughput, our oil imports and our oil exports due to Hurricane Ida, we needed to withdraw oil from our stored commercial crude supplies for the fourteenth time in sixteen weeks, and for the 30th time in the past forty-two weeks . . . our imports of crude oil fell by an average of 531,000 barrels per day to an average of 5,810,000 barrels per day, after rising by an average of 183,000 barrels per day during the prior week, while our exports of crude oil fell by an average of 698,000 barrels per day to an average of 2,342,000 barrels per day during the week, which meant that our effective trade in oil worked out to a net import average of 3,468,000 barrels of per day during the week ending September 3rd, 167,000 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 1,500,000 barrels per day lower at 10,000,000 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 total an average of 13,468,000 barrels per day during the cited reporting week…
US oil refineries reported they were processing an average of 14,302,000 barrels of crude per day during the week ending September 3rd, 1,636,000 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 average of 218,000 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 616,000 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 (+616,000) 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 omission 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 (+114,000) barrels per day, that means there was a 502,000 barrel per day difference in the EIA’s crude oil balance sheet error from a week ago, and hence the week over week supply and demand changes indicated by this report are fairly useless . . . 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 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 6,154,000 barrels per day last week, which was still 12.2% more than the 5,492,000 barrel per day average that we were importing over the same four-week period last year . . . the 218,000 barrel per day net decrease in our crude inventories was all pulled out of our commercially available stocks of crude oil, while the quantity of oil stored in our Strategic Petroleum Reserve remained unchanged . . . this week’s crude oil production was reported to be 1,500,000 barrels per day lower at 10,000,000 barrels per day because the EIA”s rounded estimate of the output from wells in the lower 48 states was 1,500,000 barrels per day lower at 9,600,000 barrels per day, while a 8,000 barrel per day increase in Alaska’s oil production to 412,000 barrels per day had no impact on the 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 23.7% below that of our pre-pandemic production peak, but 18.7% 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 81.9% of their capacity while using those 14,302,000 barrels of crude per day during the week ending September 3rd, down from 91.3% of capacity the prior week, and way below normal utilization for late summer refinery operations…while the 14,302,000 barrels per day of oil that were refined this week were actually 11.9% more barrels than the 12,779,000 barrels of crude that were being processed daily during the storm and pandemic impacted week ending September 4th of last year, they were 18.3% below the 17,495,000 barrels of crude that were being processed daily during the week ending September 6th, 2019, when US refineries were operating at what was then a near normal 95.1% of capacity…
Despite this week’s decrease in the amount of oil being refined, the gasoline output from our refineries was higher, increasing by 237,000 barrels per day to10,122,000 barrels per day during the week ending September 3rd, after our gasoline output had decreased by 364,000 barrels per day over the prior week . . . while this week’s gasoline production was 13.3% higher than the 8,930,000 barrels of gasoline that were being produced daily over the same week of last year, it was 2.3% lower than the gasoline production of 10,360,000 barrels per day during the week ending September 6th, 2019….on the other hand, our refineries’ production of distillate fuels (diesel fuel and heat oil) decreased by 625,000 barrels per day to 4,185,000 barrels per day, after our distillates output had decreased by 178,000 barrels per day over the prior week…after this week’s decrease, our distillates output was 4.8% less than the 4,398,000 barrels of distillates that were being produced daily during the week ending September 4th, 2020, and 21.6% below the 5,341,000 barrels of distillates that were being produced daily during the week ending September 6th, 2019..
Even with the increase in our gasoline production, our supply of gasoline in storage at the end of the week decreased for the thirteenth time in twenty-two weeks, and for the 27th time in forty-two weeks, falling by 7,215,000 to a twenty two month low of 219,999,000 barrels during the week ending September 3rd, after our gasoline inventories had increased by 1,290,000 barrels over the prior week . . . our gasoline supplies decreased this week because the amount of gasoline supplied to US users rose by 30,000 barrels per day to 9,608,000 barrels per day and because our exports of gasoline rose by 268,000 barrels per day to 734,000 barrels per day, and because our imports of gasoline fell by 239,000 barrels per day to 899,000 barrels per day…after this week’s inventory decrease, our gasoline supplies were 5.1% lower than last September 4th’s gasoline inventories of 231,905,000 barrels, and about 4% below the five year average of our gasoline supplies for this time of the year…
With the big decrease in our distillates production, our supplies of distillate fuels also decreased for the fourteenth time in twenty-two weeks and for the 18th time in 38 weeks, falling by 3,141,000 barrels to 133,586,000 barrels during the week ending September 3rd,after our distillates supplies had decreased by 1,732,000 barrels during the prior week….our distillates supplies fell week even though the amount of distillates supplied to US markets, an indicator of our domestic demand, fell by 705,000 barrels per day to 3,685,000 barrels per day, because our imports of distillates fell by 224,000 barrels per day to 142,000 barrels per day and because our exports of distillates rose by 58,000 barrels per day to 1,090,000 barrels per day . . . after fourteen inventory decreases over the past twenty-two weeks, our distillate supplies at the end of the week were 24.0% below the 175,845,000 barrels of distillates that we had in storage on September 4th, 2020, and about 12% below the five year average of distillates stocks for this time of the year…
Finally, with all major supply and demand metrics lower after Ida, our commercial supplies of crude oil in storage fell for the 19th time in the past twenty-nine weeks and for the 36th time in the past year, decreasing by 1,528,000 barrels over the week, from 425,395,000 barrels on August 27th to a 23 month low of 423,867,000 barrels on September 3rd, after our commercial crude supplies had decreased by 7,169,000 barrels the prior week…after this week’s decrease, our commercial crude oil inventories were about 6% below the most recent five-year average of crude oil supplies for this time of year, but were still about 29% above the average of our crude oil stocks after the third week of August 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 September 3rd were still 15.3% less than the 500,434,000 barrels of oil we had in commercial storage on September 4th of 2020, but still 1.9% more than the 416,068,000 barrels of oil that we had in storage on September 6th of 2019, and 7.0% more than the 396,194,000 barrels of oil we had in commercial storage on September 7th of 2018…