Energy Prospectus

Summary of Weekly Petroleum Data for the week ending October 04, 2024

U.S. crude oil refinery inputs averaged 15.6 million barrels per day during the week ending October 04, 2024, which was 101 thousand barrels per day less than the previous week’s average.
Refineries operated at 86.7% of their operable capacity last week. < Refineries do a lot of maintenance during September and October, which is why crude oil inventories tend to increase during this time of year.
Gasoline production increased last week, averaging 10.2 million barrels per day.
Distillate fuel production increased last week, averaging 5.0 million barrels per day.

U.S. crude oil imports averaged 6.2 million barrels per day last week, decreased by 389 thousand barrels per day from the previous week. Over the past four weeks, crude oil imports averaged about 6.4 million barrels per day, 2.5% less than the same four-week period last year.
Total motor gasoline imports (including both finished gasoline and gasoline blending components) last week averaged 48 thousand barrels per day, and distillate fuel imports averaged 104 thousand barrels per day.

Inventories: Note that demand for transportation fuels remains high in the U.S.
> U.S. commercial crude oil inventories (excluding those in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve) increased by 5.8 million barrels from the previous week. At 422.7 million barrels, U.S. crude oil inventories are about 4% below the five year average for this time of year.
> Total motor gasoline inventories decreased by 6.3 million barrels from last week and are about 4% below the five year average for this time of year. Finished gasoline and blending components inventories both decreased last week.
> Distillate fuel inventories decreased by 3.1 million barrels last week and are about 9% below the five year average for this time of year.
> Propane/propylene inventories increased by 1.9 million barrels from last week and are 9% above the five year average for this time of year.
>> Total commercial petroleum inventories decreased by 8.1 million barrels last week.

Total products supplied over the last four-week period averaged 20.6 million barrels a day, up by 2.9% from the same period last year. Over the past four weeks, motor gasoline product supplied averaged 9.0 million barrels a day, up by 7.5% from the same period last year.
Distillate fuel product supplied averaged 3.9 million barrels a day over the past four weeks, down by 0.9% from the same period last year.
Jet fuel product supplied was up 9.2% compared with the same four-week period last year.

Here's why the oil price moved higher soon after the EIA storage report was released.

From HFI Research:

It's been a while since I've seen an EIA oil storage report as bullish as this one. The last time I saw a report this bullish, we would have to go back to early 2022. But you might ask, "HFIR, crude saw a large build, what's so bullish about it?"

Well, here's something you might not have noticed from the report. EIA reported an overall total liquids draw of 7.7 million bbls. Crude storage saw a 6.2 million bbl build. According to our modified adjustment figure, we saw a jump to +817k b/d.

The jump in modified adjustment added ~5.719 million bbls. And as you will see in our real-time US oil production tracker, anytime the modified adjustment jumps like that, it's usually unsustainable.

As a result, the ~5.7 million bbls will be returned next week, which could see EIA surprise (to the bull side) vs our estimate. In other words, if the modified adjustment did not jump this week, total liquids would've seen a draw of over 10 million bbls.