Wednesday, December 9, 2020

Holy Mackerel! Did Anyone See This Coming? The Weekly US Crude Oil Build? Surges -- December 9, 2020

Updates

December 10, 2020: See first comment. Reader cites builds in crude oil inventories back in April, 2020. The reader is so correct. Look at the builds in crude oil in those five weeks during the month of "April." It was during this period that WTI crashed and on April 20, 2020, actually "went negative."

Week 67

March 4, 2020

0.8

444.1

Week 68

March 11, 2020

7.7

451.8

Week 69

March 18, 2020

2.0

453.7

Week 70

March 25, 2020

1.6

455.4

Week 71

April 1, 2020

13.8

469.2

Week 72

April 8, 2020

15.2

484.4

Week 73

April 22, 2020

15.0

518.6

Week 74

April 15, 2020

19.2

503.6

Week 75

April 29, 2020

9.0

527.6

Week 76

May 6, 2020

4.6

532.2

Week 77

May 13, 2020

-0.7

531.5

Week 78

May 20, 2020

-5.0

526.5

 Original Post

Vince Lombardi

This confirms my suspicion that no one knows what is going on. [Assuming the EIA report is not in error and that I'm reading it correctly.] Link here.

Did anyone see this coming?

From the EIA today, holy mackerel:

U.S. commercial crude oil inventories (excluding those in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve) increased by 15.2 million barrels from the previous week.

At 503.2 million barrels, U.S. crude oil inventories are about 11% above the five year average for this time of year.

Total motor gasoline inventories increased by 4.2 million barrels last week and are about 5% above the five year average for this time of year.

Finished gasoline inventories decreased while blending components inventories increased last week.

Distillate fuel inventories increased by 5.2 million barrels last week and are about 11% above the five year average for this time of year.

It will be interesting to see "Focus on Fracking" this Sunday

Re-balancing (many rows are hidden to keep the spreadsheet short enough to fit on the blog). When I re-started this spreadsheet back in 2018 there was much talk about "re-balancing." US crude oil inventories were at 447 million bbls. Today, a huge, huge inventory build, and US crude oil inventories are now over 500 million bbls. 

Based on recent OPEC+ action, they didn't see this coming either. 

But someone must have seen it coming: WTI/OPEC/Brent prices barely move.


Week

Date of Report=

Change

Million Bbls Storage

Over/under 5-year average

0

Week 0

November 21, 2018

4.9

446.9


1

Week 1

November 28, 2018

3.6

450.5


2

Week 2

December 6, 2018

-7.3

443.2


3

Week 3

December 12, 2018

-1.2

442.0


4

Week 4

December 19, 2018

-0.5

441.5


5

Week 5

December 28, 2018

0.0

441.4


82

Week 82

June 17, 2020

1.2

539.3

15%

83

Week 83

June 24, 2020

1.4

540.7

16%

84

Week 84

July 1, 2020

-7.2

533.5

15%

85

Week 85

July 8, 2020

5.7

539.2

18%

86

Week 86

July 15, 2020

-7.5

531.7

17%

87

Week 87

July 22, 2020

4.9

536.6

19%

88

Week 88

July 29, 2020

-10.6

526.0

17%

89

Week 89

August 5, 2020

-7.4

518.6

16%

90

Week 90

August 12, 2020

-4.5

514.1


102

Week 102

November 4, 2020

-8.0

484.4

7%

103

Week 103

November 12, 2020

4.3

488.7

6%

104

Week 104

November 18, 2020

8.0

489.5


105

Week 105

November 25, 2020

-0.8

488.7

6%

106

Week 106

December 4, 2020

-0.7

488.0

7%

107

Week 107

December 9, 2020

15.2

503.2

11%

2 comments:

  1. imports were a factor, but underpinning this build was the largest drop in US oil exports on record...otherwise, a lot of this week's metrics were back at the levels of April or May, when we were coming out of the lockdown...so i'll again have a long sub-headline this week...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Great observation. I've posted the US crude oil inventory over the month of "April, 2020" as an update above. It is quite remarkable.

      It was during that period, April 20th specifically, that WTI crashed and actually "went negative."

      Delete

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