- US crude oil inventories decreased by an incredibly small one million bbls from the previous week.
- US crude oil inventories are now 9% below the five-year average, at 415.1 million bbls.
- US crude oil imports average 7.1 million b/d; increased by almost a million bbls per day from the previous week.
- US refineries operated at 86.7%, trending down.
- Distillate fuel inventories decreased by 2.4 million bbls and are 19% below the five-year average.
- Jet fuel supplieed was up 29% compared with the same four-week period last year.
That minimal draw on crude oil is why oil stocks (shares) are down across the board today.
GM: I track EVs elsewhere. Guidance:
- will spend $35 billion on EVs and autonomous vehicles
- will build third EV truck factory;
- will build fourth battery factory.
OPEC: no surprises. Won't meet quotas. Bullish.
Europe's midstreamers are being hit with fairly massive IT attacks.
Texas freeze:
- forecast for less than two days
- starts today, Wednesday
- will barely drop below 28° at worse, and that just for a few hours
- at noon, I was outside, still comfortable with sweater; no jacket or parka needed
- forecast for snow, but less than an inch
- ends Friday
- schools canceled for both Thursday and Friday
UNP partners with self-driving trucks.
I have a more bullish view on the EIA report;
ReplyDelete-Including SPR crude stock down ~3 million barrels.
-Including SPR and total stock of crude and refined products, down ~7.5 million barrels.
-Net imports of crude and product, 14 million barrels.
-Domestic production flat for several weeks.
Agree with your assessment. Thank you.
DeleteMuch depends on one's timeline.
A lot of trading sentiment is simply on emotion, and short term. Yesterday, API reports a big draw; today, we find the draw is not that big according to EIA.
The picture will be quite clear on Memorial Day when US driving season begins. By that time, if there is a shooting war in Ukraine, it should be over, but Europe paying the price for letting that situation get out of hand.
So, my take is a lot of short-term sentiment driving oil prices, but things will become clearer by Memorial Day.
As I write this, BofA analyst says we will see $120 oil -- doesn't say when -- but says inventories are low and summer driving will drive demand. So, it sounds like he's looking for $100 oil medium term (six to twelve months) and $120 long term (twelve months to twenty-four months).
For investors, the other thing to watch: refiners. "No one" in America likes refineries in their backyard (think California Bay area) and expense of building / maintaining refineries gives that industry a huge moat: like land, they aren't making any more refineries except maybe for some niche hobby horses.
oil supplies, including SPR are at a 10 year low...oil + products at a 7 1/2 year low...& then there's this:
ReplyDeletethis week’s crude oil figures from the EIA appear to indicate that our total working supply of oil from net imports, from storage, and from oilfield production was 1,377,000 barrels per day more than what our oil refineries reported they used during the week…
Suggesting a 1.4 million bopd bookkeeping error? Or EIA shenanigans? Or oil companies holding information very closely to their collective chests?
Deletei've always figured it to be a combination of insufficient or inaccurate data and use of a lousy algorithm to arrive at the totals, but i can't dismiss companies withholding data as well...
Deletethe weekly oil production figures would have the greatest margin of error, but it's hard to see production dropping on the order of a million barrels per day in light of today's prices, regardless of the drop in demand..
then again, i don't pay enough attention to the backwardation...who wants to hold oil that futures prices say is going to be worth 10% less a year from now?
What bothers me most is that credible (and I'm using the term loosely) business sources like the WSJ, Reuters, Barron's, Bloomberg don't report these inconsistencies.
Delete