US DoE Crude Oil Inventories (W/W) Sep-17: -3481K (Est -2450K; Prev -6422K) - Crude Draw But Offset By Gasoline Build, Overall 6th Consec Net Draw - Details

EIA - Summary of Weekly Petroleum Data for the week ending Sep 17, 2021

US DoE Crude Oil Inventories (W/W) Sep-17: -3481K (est -2450K; prev -6422K) - Distillate: -2554K (est -1100K; prev -1689K) - Cushing OK Crude: -1476K (prev -1103K) - Gasoline: +3474K (est -1472K; prev -1857K) - Refinery Utilization: 5.40% (est 2.00%; prev 0.20%)

This week is the third of disrupted reports as the issues from Hurricane Ida flow through. But we might be sort of stable after this one as the capacity that remains offline likely will be offline for a longer period of time and is down to just 20% of oil production and less in refining capacity. In this report, EIA comes in with a large but not nearly as large crude draw as API, a bigger distillate draw but a big gasoline increase where API saw a draw. So some discrepancies this week. Cushing, where WTI is calculated, had another draw.

Overall the result was a sixth consecutive net draw in all petroleum products of -2.6mb (incl SPR), but much less than the last few weeks of -8.8mb, -10.4mb, and -13.6mb the previous three weeks (and a little over -10mb combined the two weeks before that). Total inventories now at 1,841.6 mb incl SPR (SPR had a draw of -1.2mb that it released for refining).

Crude - Production ticked up by 500kbd after last week's as more production was restarted bringing production to 10.6mbd. Net imports shot up by 1.5mbd as exports fell by -2132kb and imports increased by 1.3mbd as flows came in to make up for lost Gulf production. Adjustment up to 422kbd. Refining throughput at 87.5% from 82.1% of capacity from last week. That is down from 91.3% two weeks ago, but big improvement. Crude inventories are now -8% below the 5-year average (was -7% last week).

Products - Builds/draws detailed in table below. As noted gasoline saw a surprise +3.5mb build. Jet fuel, fuel ethanol, and residual also had small builds. Distillates had a larger draw (-2.6mb) and propane and other oils had smaller draws. Gasoline up to -3% below 5-yr avg (was -5% last week), distillates down to -14% (was -13%), and propane fell to -21% 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 - All areas other than "other oils" (which are blending components) saw increased demand with distillates and propane the biggest increases (see below). This pushed demand back up to 2019 levels. Reminder, these are at the wholesale (not retail) level. 4-week average of total demand is up 17.9% y/y (up from 16.7% last week).

US implied oil demand rose by 1.234mbpd w/w to 21.145mbpd last week

w/w changes by products in kbpd

gasoline +4

jet fuel +111

distillate +629

residual +136

propane/propylene +405

other oils -50

Here's total demand. As you can see it has gotten back to this same week in 2019.

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

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