EIA's Weekly Petroleum Report -- Big Story? The Decline In Distillate Inventories -- October 15, 2020

Updates

October 16, 2020: see first link. A reader provides the answer to my question (see below) regarding the huge decline in US distillate fuel inventories:

US distillates supplies fell by more this week because the amount of distillates supplied to US markets, an indicator of our domestic demand, rose by 307,000 barrels per day to 4,175,000 barrels per day, and because our exports of distillates rose by 258,000 barrels per day to 1,289,000 barrels per day, and because our imports of distillates fell by 70,000 barrels per day to 160,000 barrels per day ... 

... but even after this week's big inventory decrease, US distillate supplies at the end of the week were still 33.2% above the 123,501,000 barrels of distillates that we had in storage on October 11th, 2019.

Production was at a 3-year-low; largest draw since February 2003.

Original Post

Wow: maybe I'm misreading this, but if I'm reading this correctly, the big story this week in the EIA weekly petroleum report is the huge decline in distillate fuel inventories. 

I can only imagine this was the result of increased exports, but I don't know. Without an increase in exports, it's hard for me to believe that "production" plus "demand" was enough to drop inventories by that much. Normally we seen a range of +3 million to -3 million with a more narrow range of + 1.0 million bbls being the norm (?). In this report, week-over-week, the decline was a whopping 7.2 million bbls. Harvesting season? [Update: see first comment.]

EIA weekly petroleum report, link here:

• US crude oil in storage: at 489.1 million bbls, about 11% above an already-fat five-year average;
  
• US crude oil in storage decreased: decreased by 3.8 million bbls from the previous week
  
• refiners operating at 75.1% of their operable capacity
• imports: are averaging 15% less than the same four-week period last year
  

Re-balancing:

Week	Date of Report=	Change	Million Bbls Storage	Over/under 5-year average
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 84	July 15, 2020	-7.5	531.7	17%
Week 85	July 22, 2020	4.9	536.6	19%
Week 86	July 29, 2020	-10.6	526.0	17%
Week 87	August 5, 2020	-7.4	518.6	16%
Week 93	September 16, 2020	-4.4	496.0	14%
Week 94	September 23, 2020	-1.6	494.4	13%
Week 95	September 30, 2020	-2.0	492.4
Week 96	October 7, 2020	0.5	492.9	12%
Week 97	October 15, 2020	-3.8	489.1	11%

Distillate fuel:

Distillate Fuel Inventories
Week	Date of Report	Change in Millions	Relative to 5-Yr Avg
Week 1	August 26, 2020	1.40	24.0%
Week 2	September 2, 2020	-1.70	23.0%
Week 3	September 10, 2020	-1.70	20.0%
Week 4	September 16, 2020	3.50	22.0%
Week 5	September 23, 2020	-3.40	21.0%
Week 6	September 30, 2020	-3.20	21.0%
Week 7	October 7, 2020	-1.00	23.0%
Week 8	October 15, 2020	-7.20	19.0%

Crude oil imports:

Crude Oil Imports
Week (week-over-week)	Date of Report	Raw Data, millions of bbls	Change (millions of bbls)	Four-week period comparison
Week 0	March 11, 2029	6.4	0.174
Week 1	March 18, 2020	6.5	0.127
Week 2	March 25, 2020	6.1	-0.422
Week 13	June 10, 2020	6.4	0.000	-13.300%
Week 22	August 12, 2020	5.6	-0.389	-20.400%
Week 23	August 19, 2020	5.7	0.109	-21.700%
Week 24	August 26, 2020	5.9	0.185	-16.900%
Week 25	September 2, 2020	4.9	-1.000	-20.200%
Week 26	September 10, 2020	5.4	0.500	-17.900%
Week 27	September 16, 2020	5.0	-0.416	-20.100%
Week 28	September 23, 2020	5.2	0.160	-24.200%
Week 29	September 30, 2020	5.1	0.045	-21.600%
Week 30	October 7, 2020	5.7	0.600	-18.900%
Week 31	October 15, 2020	5.3	-0.447	-15.400%

Jet fuel delivered:

Jet Fuel Delivered, Change, Four-Week/Four-Week
Week	Date of Report	Change
Week 0	3/7/2020	-12.80%
Week 1	3/14/2020	-12.60%
Week 2	3/21/2020	-8.90%
Week 3	3/28/2020	-16.40%
Week 4	4/4/2020	-0.22%
Week 5	4/11/2020	-39.70%
Week 6	4/18/2020	-53.60%
Week 7	4/24/2020	-61.60%
Week 8	5/1/2020	-66.60%
Week 9	5/8/2020	-68.50%
Week 10	5/15/2020	-67.90%
Week 11	May 22, 2020	-66.60%
Week 20	July 29, 2020	-42.10%
Week 21	August 5, 2020	-40.90%
Week 22	August 12, 2020	-45.80%
Week 23	August 19, 2020	-47.60%
Week 24	August 26, 2020	-45.70%
Week 29	September 30, 2020	-46.10%
Week 30	October 7, 2020	-47.50%
Week 31	October 15, 2020	-41.80%