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%