US Crude Oil Inventories Up A Whopping 5.5 Million Bbls -- April 24, 2019

Later, April 26, 2019: a reader comments (see first comment):

Gasoline supplies have been sliding, probably in conjunction with the low refinery throughput you've been noting. But even with this week's big increase in the amount of oil being refined, gasoline output still fell by 136,000 barrels per day, after falling by 252,000 barrels per day the prior week. 

So gasoline inventories fell for the 10th week in a row, and they're now down to 225,826,000 barrels, from 258,301,000 barrels on February 8th. Ok, that's only 2% below that "5 year average for this time of year", but heading in the wrong direction only a month before Memorial Day.

In round numbers, the US is said to have set an all-time crude oil production record very recently by producing 12 million bopd. Today, the EIA says production dropped slightly to 11.9 (or maybe increased to 12.1 million bopd -- the data is "funky" as someone over at twitter is reporting). But that same "someone" has run the latest import/export numbers and suggests US crude oil production hit 12.9 million bopd. If accurate that is I.N.C.R.E.D.I.B.L.E.

And we move on.

Unfortunately, it's the wrong kind of oil. Thank you, Mr Obama.

EIA weekly petroleum report, link here. API reported a whopping increase of almost 8 million bbls of crude oil in its report yesterday.

• US crude oil inventories: increased by a whopping 5.5 million bbls (expectation: an increase of less than a million bbls)
• US crude oil inventories: total inventories now stand at 460.6 million bbls; at the 5-year average, but the average has been increasing ever since the Saudi surge, 2014 - 2016;
• refineries: operating at 90.1% capacity; much better than previous few weeks, but still very, very low; 
• but look at this: imports increased by 1,157,000 bopd from the previous week
• imports now average 6.6 million bopd, almost 20% less than the same four-week period last year, so the increase had to occur sooner or later, I suppose 

The good news: WTI seems to be unaffected by the news.

And then, look at this. Why I love to blog. I have mentioned this numerous times -- the "false precision" -- now Z4 Research says the same thing: "no way EIA has this kind of granularity." Z4 Research is a gazillion times smarter than I am. Screenshot from Z4 Research over at twitter today:

Re-balancing: remember, a couple of years ago "we" were shooting for 350 million bbls as the "definition" of re-balancing. Historically, 300 million bbls in inventory is just fine, and now we continue to trend upwards, and currently sit a modern record inventory of over 460 million bbls:

Week	Week Ending	Change	Million Bbls Storage
Week 0	November 21, 2018	4.9	446.9
Week 1	November 28, 2018	3.6	450.5
Week 2	December 6, 2018	-7.3	443.2
Week 3	December 12, 2018	-1.2	442.0
Week 4	December 19, 2018	-0.5	441.5
Week 5	December 28, 2018	0.0	441.4
Week 6	January 4, 2019	0.0	441.4
Week 7	January 9, 2019	-1.7	439.7
Week 8	January 16, 2019	-2.7	437.1
Week 9	January 24, 2019	8.0	445.0
Week 10	January 31, 2019	0.9	445.9
Week 11	February 6, 2019	1.3	447.2
Week 12	February 13, 2019	3.6	450.8
Week 13	February 21, 2019	3.7	454.8
Week 14	February 27, 2019	-8.6	445.9
Week 15	March 6, 2019	7.1	452.9
Week 16	March 13, 2019	-3.9	449.1
Week 17	March 20, 2019	-9.6	439.5
Week 18	March 27, 2019	2.8	442.3
Week 19	April 3, 2019	7.2	449.5
Week 20	April 10, 2019	7.0	456.5
Week 21	Apr 17, 2019	-1.4	455.2
Week 22	Apr 24, 2019	5.5	460.1

The "460.1" hits another new all-time high.