US DoE Crude Oil Inventories (W/W) 03-Sep: -1528K (Est -4750K; Prev -7169K) - Another Big Draw In Petroleum Products This Week - Details

EIA - Summary of Weekly Petroleum Data for the week ending Sep 3, 2021

US DoE Crude Oil Inventories (W/W) 03-Sep: -1528K (est -4750K; prev -7169K) - Distillate: -3141K (est -3500K; prev -1732K) - Cushing: 1918K (prev 836K) - Gasoline: -7215K (est -3300K; prev 1290K) - Refinery Utilization: -9.40% (est -5.00%; prev -1.10%)

This week starts the first of what will likely be at least a few weeks of disrupted reports as the issues from Hurricane Ida flow through. In this report, EIA comes in not too far off from API with a crude draw (but Cushing build) and huge draws in gasoline and distillates as Gulf refineries were offline for much of the period. As noted, Cushing, where WTI is calculated, showed a third consecutive week of builds (after months of draws), this week a little more substantial but overall inventories remain in normal territory.

Overall the result was a substantial net draw in all petroleum products of -10.4mb after last week's -13.6mb and a little over -10mb combined the previous two weeks. Total inventories now at 1,854.7 mb incl SPR (SPR flat this week).

Crude - Production fell by -1.5mbd to 10mbd. Net imports increased marginally as both imports and exports fell (exports obviously by a little more). Adjustment ticked up to 616kbd. Refining throughput fell dramatically to 81.9% of capacity from last week's 91.3%. Crude inventories remained -6% below the 5-year average (was -6% last week).

Products - Builds/draws detailed in table below. In addition to the gasoline and distillate draws noted above, also saw draws in fuel ethanol and jet fuel. Residual oils, propane, and "other" oils built (other oils are used in production of gasoline so refinery outage should see those built up). Gasoline fell to -4% below 5-yr avg (was -3% last week), distillates down to -12% (was -9%), and propane remained at -20% below (was -20%). As I've noted repeatedly, that propane deficit means stocks are too low to be heading into winter adding to a precarious inventory situation on heating fuels overall.

Demand - With the refiners offline, we saw a huge demand decrease from last week's all time highs (and given that big spike last week, might have been some numbers being readjusted) led by blending fuels (particularly "other" oils which fell by -1.3mbd) to go along a drop in propane and distillates. Total demand drop was almost -3mbd. Reminder, these are at the wholesale (not retail) level. Still, 4-week average of total demand is up 18.8% y/y (was 17.1% last week). With the refinery impacts on blending fuels it will be tough to get a good read on demand until they've come back online.

US implied oil demand fell by 2.866mbpd w/w to 19.954mbpd last week

w/w changes by products in kbpd

gasoline +30

jet fuel -175

distillate -705

residual fuel oil -234

propane/propylene -455

other oils -1326

Here's total demand. As you can see it's now below this same week in 2019, but as we discussed above it's going to be hard to get a good read on this for the next few weeks.

Here are selected inventories. Overall inventories remain lowest for this time of year since pre-2015.

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