EIA - Petroleum Status Report - August 12

[dan_s]

Summary of Weekly Petroleum Data for the week ending August 7, 2020

U.S. crude oil refinery inputs averaged 14.7 million barrels per day during the week ending August 7, 2020 which was 21,000 barrels per day more than the previous week’s average.
Refineries operated at 81.0% of their operable capacity last week. Gasoline production increased last week, averaging 9.6 million barrels per day.
Distillate fuel production decreased last week, averaging 4.8 million barrels per day.

U.S. crude oil imports averaged 5.6 million barrels per day last week, down by 389,000 barrels per day from the previous week. Over the past four weeks, crude oil imports averaged about 5.7
million barrels per day, 20.4% less than the same four-week period last year.
Total motor gasoline imports (including both finished gasoline and gasoline blending components) last week averaged 1.0 million barrels per day, and distillate fuel imports averaged 148,000 barrels per day.

> U.S. commercial crude oil inventories (excluding those in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve) decreased by 4.5 million barrels from the previous week. At 514.1 million barrels, U.S. crude oil inventories are about 15% above the five year average for this time of year. < This is even more bullish because several majors (Exxon, Chevron and Shell) have been pulling oil out of the SPR.
> Total motor gasoline inventories decreased by 0.7 million barrels last week and are about 8% above the five year average for this time of year. Finished gasoline inventories increased while blending components inventories decreased last week.
> Distillate fuel inventories decreased by 2.3 million barrels last week and are about 24% above the five year average for this time of year.
> Propane/propylene inventories increased by 2.6 million barrels last week and are about 13% above the five year average for this time of year.
>> Total commercial petroleum inventories decreased last week by 6.2 million barrels last week.

Total products supplied over the last four-week period averaged 18.5 million barrels a day, down by 14.3% from the same period last year.
Over the past four weeks, motor gasoline product supplied averaged 8.7 million barrels a day, down by 10.2% from the same period last year.
Distillate fuel product supplied averaged 3.6 million barrels a day over the past four weeks, down by 9.3% from the same period last year. Jet fuel product supplied was down 45.8%
compared with the same four-week period last year.

[dan_s]

The EIA reported, “The Short Term Energy Outlook that they expect high inventory levels and surplus crude oil production capacity will limit upward price pressures in the coming months. Still, as inventories decline into 2021, those upward price pressures will increase. EIA estimates global liquid fuels inventories rose at a rate of 6.4 million barrels per day (b/d) in the first half of 2020 and expects they will decline at a rate of 4.2 million b/d in the second half of 2020 and then decline by 0.8 million b/d in 2021.

EIA estimates that demand for global petroleum and liquid fuels averaged 93.4 million b/d in July. Demand was down 9.1 million b/d from July 2019, but it was up from an average of 85.0 million b/d during the second quarter of 2020, which was down 15.8 million b/d from year-ago levels. EIA forecasts that consumption of petroleum and liquid fuels globally will average 93.1 million b/d for all of 2020, down 8.1 million b/d from 2019, before increasing by 7.0 million b/d in 2021.
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MY TAKE:
Actual global demand for petroleum based liquids was over 101 million barrels per day in 2019. If a vaccine for COVID-19 gets the world back to normal, global demand should rebound to that level by mid-2021. If so, this world will have an oil supply shortage and oil prices will go a lot higher. Non-OPEC oil supply capacity is down and will not bounce back quickly. BTW human population is increasing by more than 250,000 per day. More people = more demand for energy.