Wow, Wow, Wow -- US Crude Oil Inventories Dropped Almost 6 Million BBls -- The Market, Energy, Political Page, Part 3, T+20 -- June 20, 2018

Yesterday, the API said US crude oil inventories dropped 3 million bbls. What does the EIA say?

The weekly petroleum report, link here:

• wow -- US crude oil inventories dropped 5 9 million bbls from previous week
• WTI immediately after the announcement: up 60 cents -- ho-hum -- 
• US crude oil inventories now below 430 million bbls; I still use 350 million billions as my benchmark; inventories stand at 426.5 million bbls -- about 2% below the 5-year average for this time of year -- although between 2015 - 2017 supplies were "manipulated" by Saudi Arabia's policy to maximize production and exports
• refineries operating at an astounding 96.7% capacity
• are the refineries keeping up?
• gasoline production decreased last week, averaging 10.1 million bopd (my benchmark is 10 million)
• distillate fuel production increased last week, averaging 5.5 million bopd (my benchmark is 5 million)
• total product supplied averaged 20.3 million bpd (my benchmark is 20 million bpd)
• we'll have to wait for the John Kemp-EIA graphs but something tells me distillate fuel is the big story here