Another Huge Draw: US Commercial Crude Oil Inventories Decreased By 6.5 Million Bbls -- August 9, 2017

From the EIA's weekly petroleum report:

U.S. commercial crude oil inventories (excluding those in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve) decreased by 6.5 million barrels from the previous week. At 475.4 million barrels, U.S. crude oil inventories are in the upper half of the average range for this time of year.

Total motor gasoline inventories increased by 3.4 million barrels last week, and are in the upper half of the average range. Both finished gasoline inventories and blending components inventories increased last week.

Distillate fuel inventories decreased by 1.7 million barrels last week but are in the upper half of the average range for this time of year. Propane/propylene inventories remained unchanged last week and are in the lower half of the average range. Total commercial petroleum inventories decreased by 4.6 million barrels last week.

My calculations (parameters previously described) suggest that at the average rate of decline over the past 15 weeks, it will take 35 weeks to "re-balance":

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
Week 14	August 2, 2017	1.5	481.9	37
Week 15	August 9, 2017	6.5	475.4	35

Other highlights:

• US refinery throughput hit a record: 17.6 million b/d; an increase of 166,000 b/d compared with the prior week
• US commercial crude stocks fell 6.5 million bbls to 475 million bbls; much faster than normal for this time of year
• US commercial crude stocks exhibiting largest summer seasonal draw since 2014
• US gasoline stocks now 5 million bbls below 2016 (a record year); the previous week the number was 11 million bbls below 2016 
• John Kemp works hard at putting the Reuters spin on all this. From Kemp, via Twitter: US gasoline supplied averaged 9.8 million b/d last week which was just 28,000 b/d higher than 2016 (fails to mention that 2016 was a record year overall)

Bottom line: for bulls, the trend looks good but still a huge glut; comparing numbers ot 2016 is almost meaningless considering how far out of line 2016 was (in terms of glut); the 10-year average has been pulled up by the 2015 - 2017 glut, and it (the 10-year average) is also the wrong metric to follow, though it's really all we have without really changing the goalposts.