US Crude Oil Inventories Increase By A Whopping 8 Million Bbls -- One Of The Biggest Increases In Recent Memory -- WTI? Flat -- January 24, 2019

US weekly crude oil inventories: link here.

• US crude oil inventories increased by a whopping 8 million bbls (exactly as predicted late last night)
• WTI: drops a penny
• US crude oil inventories now at 445.0 million bbls
• US crude oil inventories now 9% above the five-year average; and the five-year average has been rising for the past several years -- so going back to historical norms, we are well above the 9%

Does anything else in the report matter?

• gasoline production increased a bit last week but still under 10 million bpd
• distillate production decreased a bit last week but still above 5 million bpd
• oil imports increased slightly -- as would be expected with all that light WTI
• refineries are operating at 92.9% capacity; on the low side; not operating "flat out"
• everything else "white noise"

Re-balancing to 400 million bbls in storage:

Week	Date	Change w-o-w	In Storage	Weeks to RB to 350 Million Bbls
Week 0	November 21, 2018	4.9	446.9	N/A
Week 1	November 28, 2018	3.6	450.5	N/A
Week 2	December 6, 2018	-7.3	443.2	N/A
Week 3	December 12, 2018	-1.2	442.0	Never at this rate
Week 4	December 19, 2018	-0.5	441.5	Never at this rate
Week 5	December 28, 2018	0.0	441.4	Never at this rate
Week 6	January 4, 2019	0.0	441.4	Never at this rate
Week 7	January 9, 2019	-1.7	439.7	A long, long time
Week 8	January 16, 2019	-2.7	437.1	Won’t happen in my life time
Week 9	January 24, 2019	8.0	445.0	Won’t happen i my life time
		0.3

From oilprice after the report was released:

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Natural Gas Fill Rate / Withdrawal

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Later: Oilprice Reports WTI Tumbles 

After US Crude Oil Inventories Surge