The lede:
- gasoline supplies fell 2.3% on return of demand and gasoline exports at 3 1/2 year high;
- Strategic Petroleum Reserve at new 37-year low;
- 670,000 barrels per day of excess oil were produced worldwide in July, even with OPEC output 1,231,000 barrels per day short of quota
The Latest US Oil Supply and Disposition Data from the EIA:
US oil data from the US Energy Information Administration for the week ending August 5th indicated that after another big drop in our oil exports, another big withdrawal of crude from the SPR, and a shift from oil demand that could not be accounted for to oil supplies that could not be accounted for, we were able to add oil to our stored commercial crude supplies for the 4th time in 8 weeks, and for the 16th time in the past 37 weeks
Our imports of crude oil fell by an average of 1,171,000 barrels per day to average 6,171,000 barrels per day, after rising by 1,178,000 barrels per day to a 2 year high during the prior week, while our exports of crude oil fell by 1,402,000 barrels per day to 2,110,000 barrels per day, which meant that our trade in oil worked out to a net import average of 4,061,000 barrels of oil per day during the week ending August 5th, 231,000 more barrels per day than the net of our imports minus our exports during the prior week.
Over the same period, production of crude from US wells was reportedly 100,000 barrels per day higher at 12,200,000 barrels per day, and hence our daily supply of oil from the net of our international trade in oil and from domestic well production appears to have totaled an average of 16,261,000 barrels per day during the August 5th reporting week.
I always enjoy EIA makes everything add up:
Meanwhile, US oil refineries reported they were processing an average of 16,581,000 barrels of crude per day during the week ending August 5th, an average of 728,000 more barrels per day than the amount of oil than our refineries processed during the prior week, while over the same period the EIA’s surveys indicated that a net average of 23,000 barrels of oil per day were being added to the supplies of oil stored in the US.
So, based on that reported & estimated data, the crude oil figures from the EIA for the week ending August 5th appear to indicate that our total working supply of oil from net imports and from oilfield production was 343,000 barrels per day less than what what was added to storage plus what our oil refineries reported they used during the week. To account for that disparity between the apparent supply of oil and the apparent disposition of it, the EIA just inserted a (+343,000) barrel per day figure onto line 13 of the weekly U.S. Petroleum Balance Sheet in order to make the reported data for the daily supply of oil and for the consumption of it balance out, a fudge factor that they label in their footnotes as “unaccounted for crude oil,” thus suggesting there must have been an omission or error of that magnitude in this week’s oil supply & demand figures that we have just transcribed...
Moreover, since last week’s EIA fudge factor was at (-109,000) barrels per day, that means there was a 452,000 barrel per day difference between this week's balance sheet error and the EIA's crude oil balance sheet error from a week ago, and hence the net of the week over week supply and demand changes indicated by this week's report are Inaccurate by that much....
However, since most everyone treats these weekly EIA reports as gospel, and since these figures often drive oil pricing, and hence decisions to drill or complete oil wells, we’ll continue to report this data just as it's published, and just as it's watched & believed to be reasonably accurate by most everyone in the industry...
Crazy, crazy world. Crazy, crazy reporting.
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