Updates
May 17, 2018: see first comment --
The decline rate of our total oil inventories has been a bit understated because no one has been paying attention to the SPR, which has been falling too. In this reporting week the SPR decrease was at 217,000 barrels per day, greater than the decrease from commercial crude...
Original Post
Link here.
- US crude oil inventory: decreased by 1.4 million bbls (complete opposite of API data posted yesterday
- US crude oil inventory: now at 432.5 million bbls; the EIA says this is in the lower half of the average range for this time of year
- refineries: 91% -- well below their capacity, and yet gasoline and distillate fuel production unchanged, or in the case of gasoline, slightly higher than usual -- getting ready for summer driving season
- for newbies: I first stared paying close attention to this in November, 2016, when Saudi Arabia said it was going to cut production and start to drawdown global supplies. At that time, it certainly appeared to me that in modern times (i.e., the last 20 years) the US got along just fine with 350 million bbls of crude oil in storage. Even adjusting for increased demand over the past 20 years, it was hard for me to see a crude oil inventory of more than 400 million bbls as anything but "bearish" for those trading WTI.
- April 26, 2017: 529 million bbls (when I first started tracking this data and posting it on a weekly basis)
- December 28, 2017, week 35: 432 million bbls
- January 24, 2018, week 39: 412 million bbls -- this was the point; since then it has crept back up
- April 11, 2018, week 50: 429 million bbls -- the last time I posted the data, and quit tracking on my spreadsheet; it was clear, the "drawdown" was over
- today, May 16, 2018: 433 million bbls
- price of WTI today: $71.10, down 29 cents from previous report;
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