Selected Data Points From The Weekly Petroleum Report -- August 30, 2017

Some data points (and my comments) from the weekly petroleum report for the week ending August 25, 2017:

• crude oil refinery inputs up slightly
• refineries operating at 96.6% of their capacity
• gasoline production increased; distillate fuel production decreased
• US crude oil inventories decreased by 5.4 million bbls -- now at 457.8 million bbls; this is the middle of the average range for this time of year
• total gasoline inventories unchanged; near the upper limit of the average range (which makes the spike in gasoline prices even before any effect from Hurricane Harvey highly suspect -- as usual)
• motor gasoline supplied average 9.7 million bbls/day, up by 0.2% from the same period last year (will this be seen on the weekly graph, yet to be posted?)

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Tesla

In this week's issue of Barron's, the last major essay was written by David Rocker, a retired hedge fund manager who is short Tesla.

Some data points from the article:

• Tesla requires repetitive capital raises to fund persistent operating losses
• one of Tesla's major underwriters, Morgan Stanley, has an analyst covering Tesla, Adam Jonas --  "Astonishingly, Jonas raised his price target for Tesla despite recognizing the need to slash his earnings forecast." In May:
• 2017 - a loss of $3.53; 2018 - a loss of $1.14; 2019 - a profit of $2.43. 
• revised, his latest:
• 2017 - a loss of $7.60 (compare to $3.53, just a few months earlier); 2018 - a loss of $3.66 (compare to $1.14 just a few months earlier); and, 2019 -- a profit of $2.01.

Wow.

More from the article:

Tesla has been around for 14 years and has cumulatively lost more than $3.7 billion despite the massive subsidies that it and its customers have received. SolarCity, also a beneficiary of alternative-energy subsidies, lost hundreds of millions of dollars before being bailed out by Tesla. As subsidies diminish, and competition emerges, profits will be even more elusive.

Sales of the Model S and Model X have been flat for four quarters. Tesla's rising inventory and shrinking deposits suggest declining demand (remember: Tesla recently cut the price of its Model X).

In February, 2012, Elon Musk said, "Tesla doesn't need to ever raise another financing round." Nine more financings followed.

Tesla is up again today, and in every typical range (daily, weekly, monthly, YTD, one year, five years, etc), Tesla's share prices, today, are in the green.

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site. I follow Tesla because it helps me put the Bakken into perspective.