Huge Decline In Crude Oil Inventories -- Less Than 40 Weeks To "Re-Balance" At This Rate

WTI: $48.58 (up 1.44% for the day)

From Reuters:

U.S. crude stocks fell last week as refineries hiked output and imports dropped, while gasoline stocks decreased and distillate inventories fell, the Energy Information Administration said on Wednesday.

Crude inventories fell 7.2 million barrels in the week ending July 21, more than the expected decrease of 2.6 million barrels. The decline was the fourth consecutive drop, giving support to the market.

This added to hopes a long-awaited rebalancing was underway in the oil market. Saudi Arabia said on Monday it would limit oil exports to 6.6 million barrels per day (bpd) in August, down nearly 1 million bpd from a year earlier.

The entire table has been updated/corrected due to a methodology error in earlier iterations. The "re-balancing" number I use is to get us back to 350 million bbls in storage (not including SPR):

Week	Date	Drawdown	Storage	Weeks to RB
Week 0	Apr 26, 2017		529.0	180
Week 1	May 3, 2017	0.9	528.0	198
Week 2	May 10, 2017	6	522.0	50
Week 3	May 17, 2017	1.8	520.2	59
Week 4	May 24, 2017	4.4	515.8	51
Week 5	May 31, 2017	6.4	509.9	41
Week 6	June 7, 2017	-3.3	513.2	60
Week 7	June 14, 2017	1.7	511.5	57
Week 8	June 21, 2017	2.5	509.0	62
Week 9	June 28, 2017	-0.2	509.2	71
Week 10	July 6, 2017	6.3	502.9	58
Week 11	July 12, 2017	7.6	495.3	47
Week 12	July 19, 2017	4.7	490.6	43
Week 13	July 26, 2017	7.2	483.4	38

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