Is It Time For Saudi Arabia To Panic Yet? -- September 25, 2019

Let's see what the EIA numbers were:

• EIA US crude oil inventory, week-over-week: an increase of 2.4 million bbls; Big_Orrin was off by a country mile, or as much as a long-reach horizontal lateral
• EIA US crude oil inventory: 419.5 million bbls; supposedly at the 5-year average
• but look at this: refineries operating at 89.8% capacity (a rainstorm called Imelda shut down the Exxon refinery in Houston)
• even so, gasoline production increased last week, who wudda thought?
• distillate fuel production decreased last week but not by much

WTI: after the EIA report -- down a whopping $1.26; down 2.2%; and now trading at $56.03. Even worse for Saudi Arabia, who is not yet back in business, is selling what they have with a Brent price of barely breaking $60.

US shale, the swing producer:

• Saudi loses half (or more) of its export capacity
• a rainstorm shuts down (some) operations along the US coast 
• crude oil imports dropped an astounding 672,000 bopd (over a denominator of about 6.5 million bopd, or 10%)
• and, yet, US gasoline production actually increased last week, albeit not much
• US gasoline production over past four weeks averaged 9.4 million bbls; last week production came in at 10.2 million bbls -- an 8.5% increase -- and that's with Exxon's largest refinery along the coast shut down for the week (assuming that was the week that was, and I could be wrong) -- Focus on Fracking will sort this out in the weekly Sunday note

Re-balancing:

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	454.5
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	April 17, 2019	-1.4	455.2
Week 22	April 24, 2019	5.5	460.1
Week 23	May 1, 2019	9.9	470.6
Week 24	May 8, 2019	-4.0	466.6
Week 25	May 15, 2019	5.4	472.0
Week 26	May 22, 2019	4.7	476.8
Week 27	May 30, 2019	-0.3	476.5
Week 28	June 5, 2019	6.8	483.3
Week 29	June 12, 2019	2.2	485.5
Week 30	June 19, 2019	-3.1	482.4
Week 31	June 26, 2019	-12.8	469.6
Week 32	July 3, 2019	-1.1	468.5
Week 33	July 10, 2019	-9.5	459.0
Week 34	July 17, 2019	-3.1	455.9
Week 35	July 24, 2019	-10.8	445.1
Week 36	July 31, 2019	-8.5	436.5
Week 37	August 7, 2019	2.4	438.9
Week 38	August 14, 2019	1.6	440.5
Week 29	August 21, 2019	-2.7	437.8
Week 30	August 28, 2019	-10.0	427.8
Week 31	September 5, 2019	-4.8	423.0
Week 32	September 11, 2019	-6.9	416.1
Week 33	September 18, 2019	1.1	417.1
Week 34	September 26, 2019	2.4	419.5