RJS, Everything Got Worse . . . US oil supplies at a 13-year low; SPR at a 19 1/2-year low, total oil + products supply at a 94-month low after across the board draws; distillate supplies at a twenty-seven-month low The Latest US Oil Supply and Disposition Data from the EIA US oil data from the US Energy Information Administration for the week ending February 25th indicated that after a big jump in our oil exports and a drop in our oil imports, we had to pull oil out of our stored commercial crude supplies for the tenth time in 14 weeks and for the 26th time in the past forty weeks . . . our imports of crude oil fell by an average of 1,061,000 barrels per day to an average of 5,767,000 barrels per day, after rising by an average of
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RJS, Everything Got Worse . . .
US oil supplies at a 13-year low; SPR at a 19 1/2-year low, total oil + products supply at a 94-month low after across the board draws; distillate supplies at a twenty-seven-month low
The Latest US Oil Supply and Disposition Data from the EIA
US oil data from the US Energy Information Administration for the week ending February 25th indicated that after a big jump in our oil exports and a drop in our oil imports, we had to pull oil out of our stored commercial crude supplies for the tenth time in 14 weeks and for the 26th time in the past forty weeks . . . our imports of crude oil fell by an average of 1,061,000 barrels per day to an average of 5,767,000 barrels per day, after rising by an average of 1,038,000 barrels per day during the prior week, while our exports of crude oil rose by an average of 1,110,000 barrels per day to an average of 3,796,000 barrels per day during the week, which together meant that our effective trade in oil worked out to a net import average of 1,971,000 barrels of per day during the week ending February 25th, 2,171,000 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 unchanged at 11,600,000 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 13,571,000 barrels per day during the cited reporting week…
Meanwhile, US oil refineries reported they were processing an average of 15,398,000 barrels of crude per day during the week ending February 25th, an average of 153,000 more barrels per day than the amount of oil than our refineries processed during the prior week, while over the same period the EIA’s surveys indicated that a net of 709,000 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 storage, from net imports and from oilfield production was 1,119,000 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 inserted a (+1,119,000) barrel per day figure onto line 13 of the weekly U.S. Petroleum Balance Sheet in order to make the reported data for the daily supply of oil and for 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…. moreover, since last week’s EIA fudge factor was at (-200,000) barrels per day, that means there was still a 1,319,000 barrel per day difference between this week’s balance sheet error and 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 week’s report are completely worthless . . . 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 oil 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)….
This week’s 709,000 barrel per day decrease in our overall crude oil inventories left our total oil supplies at 993,445,000 barrels at the end of the week, the lowest since October 10th, 2008, and therefore at a new 13 year low . . . this week’s oil inventory decrease came as 371,000 barrels per day were being pulled our commercially available stocks of crude oil, while 338,000 barrels per day of oil were being pulled out of our Strategic Petroleum Reserve, part of the Biden administration’s original plan to release 50 million barrels from the SPR to incentivize US gasoline consumption….including other withdrawals from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve under similar recent programs, a total of 76,121,000 barrels have now been removed from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve over the past 19 months, and as a result the 580,020,000 barrels of oil remaining in our Strategic Petroleum Reserve is now the lowest since August 16th, 2002, or now at a 19 1/2 year low, as repeated tapping of our emergency supplies for non-emergencies has already drained those supplies considerably over the past dozen years . . . with Biden’s recent announcement that a further 30,000,000 million barrels will be pulled out of the SPR in the wake of the Ukraine situation, the US will have roughly 28 1/2 days of oil supply left in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve when the current withdrawal programs are complete…
Further details from the weekly Petroleum Status Report (pdf) indicate that the 4 week average of our oil imports fell to an average of 6,193,000 barrels per day last week, which was still 9.4% more than the 5,661,000 barrel per day average that we were importing over the same four-week period last year . . . this week’s crude oil production was reported to be unchanged at 11,600,000 barrels per day even though the EIA’s rounded estimate of the output from wells in the lower 48 states was 100,000 barrels per day higher at 11,200,000 barrels per day because Alaska’s oil production was 18,000 barrels per day lower at 440,000 barrels per day and subtracted 100,000 barrels per day from the rounded national production total (by the EIA’s math) . . . US crude oil production had reached a pre-pandemic high of 13,100,000 barrels per day during the week ending March 13th 2020, so this week’s reported oil production figure was 11.5% below that of our pre-pandemic production peak, but 37.6% 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 87.7% of their capacity while using those 15,398,000 barrels of crude per day during the week ending February 25th, up from a utilization rate of 87.4% the prior week, but still lower than the historical utilization rate for late February refinery operations . . . the 15,398,000 barrels per day of oil that were refined this week were 55.5% more barrels than the 9,903,000 barrels of crude that were being processed daily during week ending February 26th of 2021 in the wake of winter storm Uri, but 1.9% less than the 15,696,000 barrels of crude that were being processed daily during the week ending February 28th, 2020, when US refineries were operating at what was then also a lower than normal 86.9% of capacity at the onset of the pandemic…
With the increase in oil being refined this week, gasoline output from our refineries was also a bit higher, increasing by 4,000 barrels per day to 9,274,000 barrels per day during the week ending February 25th, after our gasoline output had increased by 440,000 barrels per day over the prior week . . . this week’s gasoline production was 11.7% more than the 8,301,000 barrels of gasoline that were being produced daily over the same week of last year, but 5.0% less than the gasoline production of 9,757,000 barrels per day during the week ending February 28th, 2020 . . . at the same time, our refineries’ production of distillate fuels (diesel fuel and heat oil) increased by 20,000 barrels per day to 4,713,000 barrels per day, after our distillates output had increased by 238,000 barrels per day over the prior week…with those increases, our distillates output was 62.6% more than the 2,898,000 barrels of distillates that were being produced daily during the storm impacted week ending February 26th of 2021, and 1.4% more than the 4,648,000 barrels of distillates that were being produced daily during the week ending February 28th, 2020…
With the increase in our gasoline production, our supplies of gasoline in storage at the end of the week fell for the fifth time in the past 13 weeks, decreasing by 468,000 barrels to 246,011000 barrels during the week ending February 25th,after our gasoline inventories had decreased by 582,000 barrels over the prior week . . . our gasoline supplies decreased again this week as the amount of gasoline supplied to US users increased by 84,000 barrels per day to 8,743,000 barrels per day, while our imports of gasoline rose by 187,000 barrels per day to 603,000 barrels per day, and while our exports of gasoline fell by 25,000 barrels per day to 660,000 barrels per day…after this week’s inventory drawdown, our gasoline supplies were still 1.0% higher than last February 26th’s gasoline inventories of 243,472,000 barrels, when Winter Storm Uri had resulted in a record draw, and about 1% below the five year average of our gasoline supplies for this time of the year…
Even with this week’s increase in our distillates production, our supplies of distillate fuels decreased for the nineteenth time in twenty-six weeks, falling by 574,000 barrels to a twenty seven month low of 119,104,000 barrels during the week ending February 25th, after our distillates supplies had decreased by 584,000 barrels during the prior week . . . our distillates supplies fell again this week because the amount of distillates supplied to US markets, an indicator of our domestic demand, rose by 217,000 barrels per day to 4,450,000 barrels per day, while our exports of distillates fell by 211,000 barrels per day to 749,000 barrels per day while our imports of distillates fell by 13,000 barrels per day to 403,000 barrels per day . . . after thirty-three inventory decreases over the past forty-seven weeks, our distillate supplies at the end of the week were 16.7% below the 142,996,000 barrels of distillates that we had in storage on February 26th of 2021, and about 16% below the five year average of distillates inventories for this time of the year…
Meanwhile, after the jump in our oil exports and the decrease in our imports, our commercial supplies of crude oil in storage fell for the 19th time in 30 weeks and for the 34th time in the past year, decreasing by 2,597,000 barrels over the week, from 416,022,000 barrels on February 18th to 413,425,000 barrels on February 25th, after our commercial crude supplies had increased by 4,514,000 barrels over the prior week . . . with this week’s decrease, our commercial crude oil inventories fell to about 12% below the most recent five-year average of crude oil supplies for this time of year, but were still 25.6% above the average of our crude oil stocks as of fourth weekend of February 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 spring 2020 and remained elevated for most of a year after that, our commercial crude oil supplies as of this February 25th were still 14.7% less than the 484,605,000 barrels of oil we had in commercial storage on February 26th of 2021, and now also 6.9% less than the 444,119,000 barrels of oil that we had in storage on February 28th of 2020, and also 7.2% less than the 445,865,000 barrels of oil we had in commercial storage on February 22nd of 2019…
Finally, with our inventory of crude oil and our supplies of all products made from remaining near multi year lows, we are continuing to keep track of the total of all U.S. Stocks of Crude Oil and Petroleum Products, including those in the SPR . . . the EIA’s data shows that the total of our oil and oil product inventories, including those in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and those held by the oil industry, and thus including everything from gasoline and jet fuel to propane/propylene and residual fuel oil, fell by 6,301,000 barrels this week, from 1,741,514,000 barrels on February 18th to 1,735,213,000 barrels on February 25th….that left our total supplies of oil & its products now at the lowest since April 18th, 2014, or at a new 94 month low, following this week’s across the board draw from all of our oil & oil product inventories…