US Crude Oil Inventories Jumped By 5.4 Million Bbls -- EIA -- May 15, 2019

EIA: weekly petroleum report later this morning. Link here. Corroborates the huge build reported by API yesterday.

• weekly US crude oil inventories: increased by a pretty impressive 5.4 million bbls 
• weekly US crude oil inventories now stand at 472.0 million bbls
• weekly US crude oil inventories are about 2% above the five-year average (wink, wink)
• refineries operating at 90.5% capacity; trending up but still down; maintenance and winter/summer switch-over coming to an end
• imports: down almost 10% from same four-week period last year
• having said that, imports last week, just for that one week, increased by almost a million bopd, averaging 7.6 million bopd
• propane/propylene inventories are almost 20% above the five-year average
• jet fuel product supplied was up 11% compared with same four-week period last year
• gasoline demand will be reported later today

Re-balancing:

Week	Week Ending	Change	Million Bbls Storage
Week 0	November 21, 2018	4.9	446.9
Week 1	November 28, 2018	3.6	450.5
Week 2	December 6, 2018	-7.3	443.2
Week 3	December 12, 2018	-1.2	442.0
Week 4	December 19, 2018	-0.5	441.5
Week 5	December 28, 2018	0.0	441.4
Week 6	January 4, 2019	0.0	441.4
Week 7	January 9, 2019	-1.7	439.7
Week 8	January 16, 2019	-2.7	437.1
Week 9	January 24, 2019	8.0	445.0
Week 10	January 31, 2019	0.9	445.9
Week 11	February 6, 2019	1.3	337.2
Week 12	February 13, 2019	3.6	450.8
Week 13	February 21, 2019	3.7	343.8
Week 14	February 27, 2019	-8.6	445.9
Week 15	March 6, 2019	7.1	452.9
Week 16	March 13, 2019	-3.9	449.1
Week 17	March 20, 2019	-9.6	439.5
Week 18	March 27, 2019	2.8	442.3
Week 19	April 3, 2019	7.2	449.5
Week 20	April 10, 2019	7.0	456.5
Week 21	April 17, 2019	-1.4	455.2
Week 22	April 24, 2019	5.5	460.1
Week 23	May 1, 2019	9.9	470.6
Week 24	May 8, 2019	-4.0	466.6
Week 25	May 15, 2019	5.4	472.0

Against 5-year average: EIA says US crude oil inventories about 2% over 5-year average.

Against 350 million bbls, which is way more than needed, 472 million bbls is 35% higher.

Against 300 million bbls which had been the historical "norm,' 472 million bbls is 57% higher.

This is now all about US crude oil exports. One needs to use calculus to calculate how much oil must be exported each week to move the US toward a) re-balancing at 400 million bbls; b) 350 million bbls in storage; c) 300 million bbls in storage.

It would be interesting to see the "target" for US storage of crude oil that Exxon, Chevron, COP, etc, are setting internally. In other words, anticipating exports in 2020, how much storage does the US need, based on estimates by the oil companies and/or the EIA?

Storage at Cushing is apparently no longer an issue and most new storage has been put in along the US gulf coast. When storage got "tight" in Cushing many years ago there were many, many stories on storage issues. However, I haven't seen similar stories now, and I wonder how much excess storage exists.

It seems the EIA weekly petroleum report could:

a) provide storage capacity; and,
b) post the amount of US crude oil exported the previous week; they provide the "import" data, but not the "export" data?

The EIA weekly petroleum report still reflects the way the US was before the shale revolution.

EIA tracks US crude oil exports here.

Fortunately, twitter contributors will provide this data.