EIA - Weekly Petroleum Report - August 21

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dan_s
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EIA - Weekly Petroleum Report - August 21

Post by dan_s »

Summary of Weekly Petroleum Data for the week ending August 16, 2019

U.S. crude oil refinery inputs averaged 17.7 million barrels per day during the week ending August 16, 2019, which was 401,000 barrels per day more than the previous week’s average. Refineries operated at 95.9% of their operable capacity last week. Gasoline production decreased last week, averaging 9.9 million barrels per day. Distillate fuel production increased last week, averaging 5.3 million barrels per day. < Our refineries need to stay at high utilization rate considering how low refined product inventories are on a days of supply basis. With all inventories in the mid-20s days of supply, we are definitely at risk of supply outages if a hurricane hits the Gulf Coast. - Dan.

U.S. crude oil imports averaged 7.2 million barrels per day last week, down by 497,000 barrels per day from the previous week. Over the past four weeks, crude oil imports averaged about 7.2 million barrels per day, 10.8% less than the same four-week period last year. Total motor gasoline imports (including both finished gasoline and gasoline blending components) last week averaged 892,000 barrels per day, and distillate fuel imports averaged 210,000 barrels per day.

> U.S. commercial crude oil inventories (excluding those in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve) decreased by 2.7 million barrels from the previous week. At 437.8 million barrels, U.S. crude oil inventories are about 2% above the five year average for this time of year. < Considering the big increase in refinery inputs and the big decline in oil imports, this decline in crude oil stocks seems rather low to me. It is important to remember that EIA's weekly numbers (as I clearly showed you in yesterday's Flash Alert) are estimates. Actually they are closer to "Wild Ass Guesses" based on flawed formulas. However, they are the best we have. - Dan.

> Total motor gasoline inventories increased by 0.3 million barrels last week and are about 4% above the five year average for this time of year. Finished gasoline inventories decreased while blending components inventories increased last week.

> Distillate fuel inventories increased by 2.6 million barrels last week and are about 2% below the five year average for this time of year.

> Propane/propylene inventories increased by 4.0 million barrels last week and are about 12% above the five year average for this time of year.

>> Total commercial petroleum inventories increased last week by 4.0 million barrels last week. < Take out Propane and the other products were flat.

Total products supplied over the last four-week period averaged 21.5 million barrels per day, up by 3.1% from the same period last year. Over the past four weeks, motor gasoline product supplied averaged 9.7 million barrels per day, up by 1.5% from the same period last year. Distillate fuel product supplied averaged 3.8 million barrels per day over the past four weeks, down by 1.6% from the same period last year. Jet fuel product supplied was up 4.0% compared with the same four-week period last year.
Dan Steffens
Energy Prospectus Group
dan_s
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Joined: Fri Apr 23, 2010 8:22 am

Re: EIA - Weekly Petroleum Report - August 21

Post by dan_s »

EIA Reports Details here: https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_sum_sn ... _nus_w.htm

U.S. crude oil production has still not returned to the peak production during the last week of May. At the current active drilling rig count it will be difficult for oil production to be held flat at about 12.3 million barrels per day. This compares to U.S. refinery inputs of crude oil of 17.7 million barrels per day last week. FYI we are still not a net exporter of crude oil as some of the Washington gang likes to say.

Every month this year EIA's Short-Term Energy Outlook ("STEO") report has forecast a big increase in U.S. oil production, but actual production during five months ending May 31, 2019 was actually lower than the actual U.S. oil production in December, 2018. EIA is part of the Department of Energy, which has a HUGE budget and thousands of employees. Is it possible that the brilliant people that publish the STEO report don't ever sit down and reconcile the differences to the actual production data from the states which comes out three months later???

With U.S. oil production flat, refinery inputs up and imports of crude oil down I was expecting to see U.S. exports of crude oil to be way down since the first three don't explain the relatively small draw from crude oil inventories. However, exports of U.S. crude oil were UP by 120,000 barrels per day. Sometimes the detail provided by EIA doesn't seem to fit with their summary report put out several hours earlier.

Days of supply are approaching the danger zone.
July 12 to Aug 16

26.3 to 25.1 day for Crude Oil
24.5 to 24.2 days for Gasoline
22.2 to 21.7 days for Jet Fuel
36.5 to 35.9 days for Distillates

For a country that relies heavily on a steady supply of transportation fuels, we are now running very tight on available supplies. Sure hope we don't have a major hurricane this year.
Dan Steffens
Energy Prospectus Group
ChuckGeb
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Re: EIA - Weekly Petroleum Report - August 21

Post by ChuckGeb »

Where do you think the stated 2 million bbls a day for Q3 of excess demand over supply is showing up?
dan_s
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Joined: Fri Apr 23, 2010 8:22 am

Re: EIA - Weekly Petroleum Report - August 21

Post by dan_s »

Demand for transportation fuels ALWAYS peaks in Q3, just because 90% of humans live in the northern hemisphere. Just in the U.S., the inputs of oil to our refineries will stay high because refined production inventories are too low.

On the supply side, U.S. oil production peaked in April or May and will be flat through year-end. The active rig count is down and DUC inventory is back to normal level, so wells drilled and wells completed s/b about the same going forward. There is usually a ramp of production at year-end because upstream companies want to get more new wells into their year-end reserve reports and simply to beat the bad weather in December to March. However, last year we had a lot more high quality DUC wells. Go back and see the table at the top of the Flash Alert that we sent out on Tuesday afternoon. On the table you will see a dip in U.S. oil production from December, 2018 to Q1 2019. BTW EIA was reporting higher U.S. oil production in Q1 than what actually happened.

OPEC+ supply cuts, Venezuela meltdown and sanctions on Iran also lowers the global supply.

On August 21 OPEC reported that OPEC+ (includes Russia and a 9 other small oil exporting countries) were 159% in compliance with their production quotas that extend to March 31, 2020. Cuts well beyond their quota tells me that Saudi Arabia is serious about pushing oil prices a lot higher ahead of their Aramco IPO.
Read more: https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/opec ... n-targets/
Dan Steffens
Energy Prospectus Group
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