Oh-Oh -- US Crude Oil Inventories Increased Moderately -- The Market And Energy Page, Part 2, T+298 -- November 15, 2017

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site. Do not make any investment, financial, job, travel, or relationship decisions based on what you read here or what you think you may have read here.

Target: despite beating estimates, Target is getting slammed. Down 26% for the year, Target shares dropped a little over $5 this morning, after earnings came out (down 8.44%) and now trading at $55.04. The numbers were great; the guidance was awful: flat to maybe slightly improved. WMT in the same period has risen from $68 to $90, a gain of 32% over one year.

WTI: Yahoo!Finance top story -- market opens 150 points down, said to be due to slide in oil prices, exactly what I said two days ago. Talking heads say the slide in oil is due to a) declining Chinese demand; and b) continued "over" production in the states. I don't bu the "declining Chinese demand" story. We will see EIA's weekly report and US crude oil inventories for the past week later this morning.

I keep reading that oil supplies in the US are "tightening." I don't see it. Whoever is saying that must be "talking their book." I tend to follow the data. The price of WTI is going to have to drop below $50 for US shale production to decrease.

If you have not listened to the podcast at this post, I highly recommend it. By the way, for the record, I disagree with the interviewee's comments about "swing producers" and how quickly the Bakken can respond to price swings. It was interesting to hear that unconventional response to price is 9x the conventional oil response -- listen to the podcast to understand this. This is the quote from Platts via Twitter: "US drillers are now 9x more responsive to oil prices since adopting unconventional drilling. I understand that and agree with it. It's the "swing producer" stuff and the ability of the Bakken to respond to price changes that I disagree with. I think the phrase "excess capacity" is a misnomer these days, a carryover from a decade ago.

Before the weekly petroleum report: $55.08/bbl WTI; after the report, slightly below $55.

• US crude oil inventories: increased by 1.9 million bbls; now at 459 million bbls
• refinery operating at91% capacity; improving slightly
• gasoline production decreased last week, now at 9.9 million b/d
• distillate production increased last week, not at 5.2 million b/d
• gasoline build: 0.9 million bbls
• distillate drawdown: 0.8 million bbls

We'll see the "gasoline demand" graph tomorrow.

Re-balancing now estimated to take another 43 weeks, up from 42 weeks, and, of course, another week has gone by without making any new headway on re-balancing.

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	52
Week 15	August 9, 2017	6.5	475.4	35
Week 16	August 16, 2017	8.9	466.5	30
Week 17	August 23, 2017	3.3	463.2	29
Week 18	August 30, 2017	5.4	457.8	27
Week 19	September 7, 2017	-4.6	462.4	32
Week 20	September 13, 2017	-5.9	468.2	39
Week 21	September 20, 2017	-4.6	472.8	46
Week 22	September 27, 2017	1.8	471.0	46
Week 23	October 4, 2017	6.0	465.0	41
Week 24	October 12, 2017	2.8	462.2	40
Week 25	October 18, 2017	5.7	456.5	37
Week 26	October 25, 2017	-0.9	457.3	39
Week 27	November 1, 2017	2.4	454.9	38
Week 28	November 8, 2017	-2.2	457.1	42
Week 29	November 15, 2017	1.9	459.0	43