Weekly EIA Petroleum Report -- Pay Attention To The Distillate Fuel Numbers -- Mentioned Before -- Becoming More Apparent -- GDPNow -- April 26, 2023

Locator: 44475B. 

Weekly EIA petroleum report: link here. 

• US crude oil in storage dropped by 5.1 million bbls despite almost everything else remaining unchanged in the US economy. N.B. 
• where, repeat, where is all that oil going? [to steal a line from an old Columbo show]
  
• XOM just expanded its huge Beaumont refinery
  
• US crude oil in storage, at 460.9 million bbls -- is still only 1% below the five-year average.
• someone is noticing -- the refiners -- imports are now more than 8% more than same four-week period last year -- that's one takeaway from this report ... think about that ... the economy is "flat" at  best and GDPNow -- today -- suggests a really weakening economy, and yet US refiners are stilll importing lots of crude oil. 
• yes, I know, not all oil is created equally; see RBN Energy today;
  
• and the numbers suggest the refiners are having trouble keeping up. Look at distillate fuel.
• the refiners -- at 91.3% -- solidly over 90% of their operable capacity, and yet ... distillate fuel.
• distillate fuel:
• farming; and,
• US long-haul trucking.
• distillate fuel: decreased by 0.6 million bbls and just that tiny bit of decline resulted in a 12% drop in storage compared to same period last year
  
• farming; and,
• US long-haul trucking.
• propane is doing fine but propane is not needed until the autumn.
• jet fuel product supplied was up 3.3% compared with the same four-week period last year.

After the report, WTI dropped another 1.25%.

Bottom line: oil traders betting on a recession.

June 23, 2023: WTIBrent.

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GDP Now

Not good. Huge drop.

Link here.